KEY stakeholders within the WA meat and wool industries are concerned that the debate on the mulesing of Australian sheep could be reignited, following Meat and Livestock Australia’s (MLA) public support of the phasing out of mulesing of sheep destined for prime lamb markets.
The topic was brought to the fore last week when MLA managing director Richard Norton raised the Sheepmeat Council of Australia’s (SCA) policy ‘that sheep producers phase out mulesing as soon as practical’ for prime lamb at the Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA (PGA) annual convention in Perth on Wednesday.
Mulesing is the surgical removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech of a sheep to prevent flystrike, primarily performed in Australia on Merino sheep produced for wool.
SCA made headlines last week when it reiterated its policy to phase out mulesing, however SCA chief executive officer Dr Kat Giles said this policy was not new, and the peak sheepmeat national body had made no policy changes.
Ms Giles said SCA had made public its position in July that producers of prime lamb phase out mulesing.
“We haven’t changed our position and we haven’t changed our policy, our policy is still to phase out mulesing from the sheep meat industry when practical and when appropriate depending on businesses and that we continue to promote the use of pain relief,” Dr Giles said.
“Prime lamb mothers, if they need to be mulesed depending on the conditions – like where they are in geographical locations and depending on the production and depending on their breed – if they need to be mulesed they must be done with pain relief.”
Mr Norton welcomed the SCA’s comments at the PGA convention, saying it put the MLA in a good position to defend Australian prime lamb markets.
“What I expressed was that industry needed to mitigate the risk, the Sheepmeat Council has mitigated that risk by clearly stating that no prime lamb in Australia needs to be mulesed,” Mr Norton said.
“Industry was lagging in this issue and it needed to be addressed and that’s I suppose the position that we come at in terms of telling the world what we do.
“Our mandate is to market the product and grow the product’s demand and it’s around protecting the prime lamb industry, I make no apologies for that.”
Mr Norton said although no changes would be made to regulation, the MLA was now in a position to express to key customers the Australian industry’s stance against the mulesing of sheep destined for the prime lamb market.
He said there was mounting pressure on Australian producers to abandon mulesing due to a rising consumer interest in animal welfare.
Mr Norton said the MLA was simply relaying customer concerns, and identifying risks to Australian markets.
“I don’t care whether you mules or not, it’s not up to me to tell this industry whether or not they mules,” Mr Norton said.
“The simple fact is, it’s up to me when I get asked questions about what consumers think is to relay to you what consumers think.
“In 2011 the live export industry didn’t quite realise what consumers thought of live export.
“Consumers can change the market overnight, they can sway the influence of the government if they don’t like a practice, why not have the discussion before it becomes a Four Corners exposé.
“If we didn’t do anything and this erupted as a major issue in industry, industry would be looking at MLA and saying why did you not foresee this risk.”
Mr Norton said several markets concerned about the practice had already been lost.
“In the tracking that we do – we do global and domestic consumer tracking – the trends around animal welfare as a major risk to industry are quite prominent,” he said.
“For probably over a decade there’s supermarkets in Europe that won’t buy Australian lamb on the perception that our industry continues to mules.
“Consumers don’t differentiate between a Merino lamb and a prime lamb – at least now if it erupted tomorrow we could say that it’s not a practise in the prime lamb industry.”
Irwin producer and former PGA president Rob Gillam said he was concerned comments made by Mr Norton at the PGA Convention were “the thin end of the wedge” and could stir up an unnecessary debate.
Mr Gillam runs 6500 Merino ewes, of which a portion are mated to Poll Dorsets for prime lamb production.
He said like most producers, he did not mules sheep destined for the prime lamb market, but mulesed his Merinos with pain relief as an essential part of his animal husbandry program.
“We’ve never mulesed crossbreds, there’s no requirement because you sell them, even if you take some time to sell them they’re all gone within a year,” Mr Gillam said.
“Mulesing is an operation that has been around for a long time now, and sure there is some pain for the sheep at the time but with pain relief you can lessen it to a great extent.
“We continue to mules, we use pain relief and we don’t lose any lambs, they recover quickly and we don’t think it’s a problem.”
“He (Mr Norton) didn’t give me a lot of confidence that he wasn’t going to continue to move against mulesing at some stage in the future, or support a move to go non-mulesing.”
Mr Gillam said until a reasonable alternative was found, any move to ban mulesing would significantly reduce the WA sheep flock.
“If for some reason there was a move now to outlaw mulesing again then if it were successful I think there’d be people –- and we’d be one them – that would have to seriously consider our Merino flock,” Mr Gillam said.
“The fact of the matter is that in our situation here, we’d have to at least crutch once more per year which is more cost of course and handling to the sheep.
“Most Merino breeders in WA are not in the position where they could move to a phase out mulesing without a great lot of extra cost, extra husbandry, and in many cases that would probably be enough to say instead of bothering about sheep we’ll do something else, we’ll do more cropping or do more cattle.
“If the mothers of prime lambs were not allowed to be mulesed then what it would mean is that people would either have to breed a composite-type ewe and their wool value would certainly lessen to a large degree and I think you’d see a reduction in numbers.
“Sheep would take a hit in WA, and I suspect it would happen all over Australia.”
Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) director David Webster said he was surprised at comments made by Mr Norton, but expected it would have no impact on the wool industry.
Mr Webster said there was no issue with selling wool from mulesed sheep, and customers that were interested in wool from non-mulesed sheep were not willing to pay a premium.
He said bringing the debate into the spotlight would cause more harm than good.
“They choose to make decisions that seriously damage their own industry and the volume throughput of their industry, so from a wool industry point of view given that everything has been very settled for a long time, why would you even bother opening up the debate?” Mr Webster said.
“The AWI will continue doing all of the R&D that we can to solve the problem and we’ll keep working on the problem but until such time as there is a viable alternative – which at this point in time there is not - until there’s a management factor people could not manage flocks.
“It will be seriously detrimental to the lamb industry as well because they’ll pursue that sort of talk, it will only be damaging themselves.”
“It’s not in the interest of wool growers, it’s not in the interest of sheep producers to have this debate, livestock in Australia are very well cared for, we’re very good managers that work in the interest of the animal’s health.”
