Australian Superfine Wool Growers Association's mulesing debate heats up

NSW vice president and chairperson of the Goulburn Yass division Neil Carey has left the organisation, saying that his values no longer align with those of the ASWGA.

Mr Carey said the Italian mills were pushing heavily for the association's membership base to go completely non-mulesed, with Loro Piana even indicating it would choose to not renew its membership over the issue.

"What I can't understand is that we're in a position where the client is pushing this," he said.

"A lot of our members seem to be of the opinion that they're asking fair too much... when you're not listening to your clients, they'll go elsewhere and they won't be your clients for much longer if you don't heed their advice.

"My business plan comes first so I made a business decision to cease any sort of work to be done with them in the future."

Mr Carey, who stopped mulesing six years ago, said he previously left the ASWGA once before over mulesing but had rejoined in 2018, hoping for a change in direction.

Mr Carey said it was his understanding that the mills would like to see all members of the ASWGA be certified non mulesing growers.

"We don't mules and we want to make sure our prosperity is secure in the future and the only way we can do that is to dissociate ourselves from an association that is not listening to its mill members to any extent at the moment," he said.

"I'm not out to split the ASWGA at all... but the pressure's on in the wool market at the moment.

"The bottom line is that Australian superfine wool isn't a commodity... we're pushing it to get the micron down so they can spin the finest cloths they possibly can but there's also got to be a story of ethics and sustainability behind it and that story's just not a good one if it's tainted with some sort of mulesing exercise that may be thought of in the background."

President Mark Waters said it wasn't the ASWGA's place to impose a non-mulesing mandate upon its membership.

"We don't tell people what to do on their farms at all, what they do inside their boundary fences is their job," he said.

"There are some areas that are quite difficult to manage because of the amount of dag, which leads to flies.

"We're talking about farms that aren't level in the playing field, they're all a bit different.

"Our focus is on growing good wool and presenting it as well as we can to the industry.

"We're at where we're at because we don't want to lose membership.

"Our association is not just about wool, it's more about people, if we go down a different path we are likely to lose people."

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Mr Waters said more than 70 per cent of the ASWGA had stopped mulesing, but there was increasing concern from the Italian mill members about the growers that do still use mulesing.

"I've just been over to Italy for a visit and the Italian mills are not in favour of [mulesing], so it's just something that's going to have to be worked through," he said.

"Our organisation has still got some discussions to be had because all the mills in Italy want it to be unmulesed.

"We've got to start listening to the mills, because they're the guys that actually buy our wool."

Mr Waters said the 2010 deadline to end mulesing had been abandoned because there wasn't a solution for flystrike and until research produced those solutions, it would be a complex issue for the industry.

"It's the brands putting the pressure on, the brands don't want anyone to stand out the front of their shop protesting," he said.

"I only spoke to the Italian mills, we can still sell [mulesed wool] to China.

"At this stage they're not that hard and fast on it but if they change in a few years time, it might get very difficult to sell."

Mr Waters said NZ and South Africa were a long way down the non-mulesed path and the perception of Australia as a nation that still uses mulesing was holding the industry back.

"There's this perception that Australia still mules and it doesn't matter if you are or if you've stopped, the perception is that we still do it," he said.

"Even if it's spelt out on the National Wool Declaration, that doesn't seem to hold a lot of weight, because that's the perception."