Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly not. The reality I am pointing out is that this is the alternative. That chemical was very useful to people in agriculture, and they have now simply been told that they cannot use it. Yet I can find examples of neither harm to humans over the many years that it has been used nor in fact, for that matter, harm to the sheep which frequently get dunked in it, let alone sprayed with it. I just make the point because the opportunity arises, in all of these processes, for the political structure to provide that the test not be overly intrusive or overly expensive, because obviously that cost will be passed on to consumers. In the case of veterinary chemicals, we find people wanting to withdraw products that have been around for a very long time, have a very definite use and, as far as I can see from a practical perspective, do not have any harmful effects.

I well remember reading a very interesting article in this wider regard about how easy it is to prove that a particular product is carcinogenic. Of course the typical process is to feed the product or make it available to laboratory rats. But the best way to induce cancer in a laboratory rat is to feed it too much protein. If they eat too much, they will get cancer. It might be a bit of a message to us. But the reality is that you can affect the outcome of those particular tests outside of the effect of the product being tested. I think these things need to be put on the record because that is quite silly.

It is interesting to note, when one starts to test these products—I made comment, as you might remember, in the party room—that testing capacity is now so definitive that a scientist writing on these matters and making that reference to laboratory rats said that we could now discover two teaspoons of vermouth if they were in the Great Lakes of America and if those Great Lakes were full of gin. This fellow went on to say that that would be a very dry martini. So we have those testing procedures, and we should be using them more positively in testing for drugs in humans. I will not extend on that for fear that I might also be told that I am getting a bit off the mark.

I support this legislation. It is very practical, and I hope it performs to the convenience of the industry and the consumer in a somewhat better way than the APVMA process.

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