By LUCY KELLER

Australian animal welfare standards aren’t improving as quickly as the world’s front-runners, according to an animal rights expert.

“Other countries are moving pretty rapidly,” Monash University animal law lecturter Dr Joanna Kyriakakis said. She pointed to New Zealand and the European Union, which have banned controversial practices such as cosmetic testing and sow stalls.

Meanwhile the Criminal Code Amendment (Animal Protection) Bill 2015 – dubbed the “Ag-gag” law by rights groups – would stop large-scale investigations, like those which exposed live-baiting scandals in the greyhound racing industry.

“It’s about trying to stop transparency, because I think there’s a fear that if people can’t avoid knowing, maybe behaviour will change,” Dr Kyriakakis said.

She said a “lack of transparency” in using animals for cosmetic and scientific testing also played a big part in holding back welfare standards.

Public knowledge of the approvals and use of animals for testing is “not a private matter … it affects all of us … it can’t be left purely to the interest of the people involved,” she said.

Animal ethics committees that approve the use of animals for scientific purposes exist to minimise the use of, or harm to, animals.

Dr Kyriakakis said more public oversight into the committees could have made people confident the code was being rigorously followed.

She also said she was “not convinced” the composition of the ethics committees eliminated any conflict of interest issues, with only one-third of the committee required to be independent of the institution that was seeking approval.

The Department of Environment and Primary Industries, which oversees the role of Victorian animal ethics committees, did not comment in time for this report.

Dr Kyriakakis also said potential improvements to animal welfare standards were harder to achieve if they posed a large cost to industries, “even if there is a lot of public support”.

Zoos Victoria animal welfare specialist Sally Sherwen said animal welfare had “a long way to go”.

Ms Sherwen said Zoos Victoria was working to improve animal welfare by shifting towards encouraging “positive animal welfare” and “happiness,” rather than “mitigating negative conditions”.

She said zoos also had a big role to play in welfare issues outside of the zoo, which were commonly seen as the focus of other welfare organisations such as the RSPCA.

Ms Sherwen said she was working on introducing new campaigns that were “solely focused on welfare issues”, like cosmetic testing on animals.

Zoos have come under fire by a number of animal rights organisations, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who criticise them for wrongfully keeping animals captive.

“In a perfect world zoos wouldn’t exist,” Ms Sherwen said. “But in reality that’s not the case. So if we’re going to justify keeping animals in captivity for conservation, we’ve got to have high standards of welfare.”