• If you wouldn’t put irritating cosmetics into your eye, why would you let someone do it to an animal? Photos by Matthew Dwyer

COSMETIC testing on animals came under the spotlight in Freo on Monday.

Federal Labor MP Melissa Parke hosted an ALP forum on the issue as her party grapples with a policy of banning the sale and advertising of cosmetics or ingredients tested on animals.

Medical testing is excluded.

“The Fremantle community has consistently shown support for improved animal welfare and I welcome the opportunity to consider how animal suffering in the testing of cosmetics can be stopped,” Ms Parke says.

A key speaker was Notre Dame philosopher Philip Mathews, who says it’s a worry testing on animals by the cosmetics industry remains largely unregulated. He says rabbits around the world are still having chemicals poured into their eyes, principally so companies can test for allergic reactions.

The growing of human cells offers an alternative to testers that’s free of ethical concerns, but Dr Mathews says it’s more expensive so companies don’t bother because opposition is negligible.

While universities must run all animal research through an ethics committee, the industry has no such controls.

• Dr Philip Matthews

Dr Matthews says every student at Notre Dame is obliged to study ethics.

“It always starts with the kicking the puppy scenario,” he says.

“If you think it’s cruel to kick a puppy, then you universalise it to make this a rule about the treatment of all animals.”

He says there’s been big debates in philosophy over the self-awareness of animals, and therefore how they should be treated.

Famed French philosopher Rene Descartes conducted vivisections on live dogs, convinced they weren’t self-aware, telling his audience to ignore the animals’ agonised cries because they surely couldn’t feel pain.

But Dr Mathews says it’s more a question about animals’ ability to communicate.

He supports the views of the “patron saint of animal rights”, Englishman Jeremy Bentham who wrote: “The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?”

Dr Mathews has also bowled the Labor party a googlie; if the party campaigns against cosmetics testing, should its support for live exports also be re-examined.

“Sheep on ships is cruel,” he says.

The acting dean of NDU’s philosophy department says another concern with cosmetics is the use of nano-particles and he bemoans their widespread introduction without proper debate.

With no regulations covering them and little research on their long-term effects, Dr Mathews says it’s not animals that are the subject of the experiment, but humans.

by STEVE GRANT