1 August 2013

Another chance to end animal testing of legal highs

Today’s launch of Mojo Mathers’ members’ bill is the latest step in the Green Party’s campaign to stop the testing of legal highs on animals.

“This bill, if drawn out of the ballot, is another chance for Parliament to get it right and change the law to protect animals from unnecessary and cruel testing of legal highs,” said Green Party animal welfare spokesperson Mojo Mathers.

The Psychoactive Substances (Prohibiting Information from Animal Testing) Amendment Bill achieves the same outcome as the amendment Mojo Mathers put forward during the voting on the Psychoactive Substances Act.

“The thousands of New Zealanders and their dogs, who marched against animal testing of legal highs earlier this week, made it pretty clear that this issue isn’t going away anytime soon,” said Ms Mathers.

“My bill would rule out the use of data from animal testing of legal highs. It’s a practical, easy to enforce change to the legislation.”

Ms Mathers said that because the Labour Party was back up to voting full strength with the swearing in of Meka Whaitiri this week, if her bill did get drawn it would only need New Zealand First to change their vote from abstain to support, and independent MP Brendan Horan to support and the bill would pass.

“My bill won’t change the requirement to prove that the drugs will pose no more than a low risk of harm before they are approved, it just requires then to do so without recourse to animal testing,” said Ms Mathers.

“The public feeling on this issue is unmistakable. I was pleased to hear the Minister’s comments that he wants to avoid animal testing and he’s very welcome to take my bill on as a way to do that.

“The recently passed Act’s current provisions to avoid some animal testing will be incredibly hard to monitor or enforce and is unlikely to be effective.

“We have never seen any evidence that animal testing is needed. In fact the evidence we have seen is that animal tests can be replaced with modern and accurate non-animal tests,” said Ms Mathers.

For a copy of Mojo Mathers’ bill:
http://www.greens.org.nz/bills/psychoactive-substances-prohibiting-information-animal-testing-amendment-bill

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