The wool industry's official deadline for a halt to mulesing is 2010, but it was made clear in Glen Innes this week that even now, "mulesing as usual" is not in the industry's interests.
"Retailers don't want PETA on their doorstep," Norm Blackman, manager of the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce, told the Road to 2010 meeting in Glen Innes on Monday.
"Retailers are really are concerned about the sort of violent tactics, the image that is created, when these people are targeting their stores."
But Mr Blackman also made it clear that stopping mulesing was not an industry-wide imperative. AWI will help provide the tools to halt mulesing, he said, but whether producers use them is up to individuals according to the feedback they get from the retail chain.
Complicating the urgency of Mr Blackman's message was another from AWI communications specialist, Alastair Hodgson, who underlined that clips are being considered as an interim option that won’t be suitable for everyone, and that a commercial intradermal treatment is still some way off.
The preferred genetic option—breeding plainer sheep less susceptible to breech strike—could be years, perhaps decades off for most growers on the Northern Tablelands, who have yet to tackle the delicate balance between breeding outstanding fine wool and strike-proof plain-bodied sheep.
The only option immediately to hand is Bayer’s Better Choices pain relief option.
As Better Choices business development manager, Alan Giffard, told the meeting, use of Bayer’s Tri-Solfen pain relief product delivers the same result to mulesed lambs as humans expect when they undergo surgery.
The industry now has the task of persuading retailers that pain relief addresses the ethical concerns it has about mulesing—almost certainly in the face of an ongoing campaign by PETA to ban the mulesing process altogether.
"PETA don’t like mulesing, whether with pain relief or without," said Mr Hodgson. "I’d be very surprised if PETA accepted it."
The Road to 2010 forums, hosted by the NSW Farmers Association and AWI to update growers on industry progress toward the 2010 deadline, coincided with two events that show the wool industry’s readiness to tackle the issue: the first sale dedicated to unmulesed wool and the release of a new National Vendor Declaration that describes a flock's mulesing status.
The National Wool Declaration asks woolgrowers to check a box if they have ceased mulesing, or have never practiced it; and to indicate whether pain relief was used if mulesing was carried out.
Woogrowers should have their first made-to-order solution to mulesing in the next year, Mr Hodgson said, when AWI’s commercial partner is preparing to commercially release clips to the industry.
Last-minute work is being carried out on biodegradibility. As Mr Hodgson noted, each lamb will need four clips to achieve the desired result, and that will currently mean paddocks littered with clips when they fall off 14 days after application.
Progress on intradermal injections appears to have been delayed, and won’t be a tool available to woolgrowers in 2010. Genetic work on controlling the blowfly is much further out.
Overshadowing these management concerns looms a much larger issue: how the wool industry persuades the retail world that in a time of global resource stress, its natural, sustainable and desirable fibre is worth having more than an implacable foe that makes up its own rules on right and wrong.