Producers body says levy payers denied market data they paid for

A leading livestock enterprise has been accused of watering down a crucial study into mulesing.

Australian Wool Innovation has been accused of “burying” key market information about customers views on mulesing in “glossed over” reports, which wool growers have paid their levies to fund.

The barb comes from the peak grower representative group WoolProducers Australia over how AWI commissioned a survey of consumer attitudes to mulesed wool and whether the $10,000 report actually gave clear information growers need to make informed decisions.

The Buyer Views on Mulesed Wool survey found “animal welfare and mulesing are mid-tier priorities … (and) there is a diversity of views vary across markets around animal welfare

and mulesing”.

WoolProducers has accused the federal Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry of allowing AWI to miss an “opportunity to inform growers of our customers views on the contentious issue of mulesing” by not enforcing the terms of the performance recommendation made by Accenture in 2021.

Accenture’s independent review of AWI called for AWI to commission an independent report to measure current, and predict future trends, in consumer sentiment towards mulesed wool.

But, WoolProducers said DAFF allowed AWI to water down the subsequent survey and to withhold some of the report from public release.

“To claim mulesing is a mid-tier priority when buried among a lot of other issues that wool growers have no control over and gloss over the fact that nearly half of respondents (45 per cent) identified mulesing as a priority is not helping growers,” WoolProducers chief executive Jo Hall said.

For many customers, they would only buy non mulesed wool, she said, so mulesing was clearly an imperative issue facing the industry.

Ms Hall said DAFF needed to explain why the department allowed AWI to conduct the survey in a manner that did not give clear answers on mulesing, which “did not meet the intent of the original independent recommendation, including removing the focus away from mulesing and burying it among a lot of other issues outside of growers control”.

AWI chief executive John Roberts.

AWI chief executive John Roberts said the full report had not been made public to “protect commercially sensitive information about the participants” and the approach was “approved by DAFF”.

When asked by The Weekly Times what market intelligence AWI could now give growers, as a result of the $10,000 consumer survey, about future trends of mulesed wool, Mr Roberts said the report “shows a diversity of opinion”.

“The findings also reflect the feedback AWI gets regularly from our overseas offices and key contacts,” he said.

“That market intelligence and the differences from Europe to China for example are shared at the quarterly Wool Industry Consultation Panel.”

A spokesman for DAFF said “AWI proposed that a survey on a range of issues would be more useful to itself and industry, rather than surveying the supply chain on a single issue.”

He said the independent review recommendation “did not preclude such an approach”.

Further, the department considered AWI was “meeting the requirements of its obligations for spending grower levy funds, and matching public funds” on eligible R&D projects, he said.

Meanwhile, the stoush comes as growers face pressure on another front – the loss of a key chemical used to fight fly attacks on non-mulesed sheep.

Some of the most well-known and used products for flystrike and lice control in sheep could soon be off the shelves, as the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority’s propose changes to diazinon uses permits.