Efficiency1st

Efficiency1st spokesman Mr Charlie McCowen has today called on the Australian wool industry to resist the pressure being placed on it by multinational chemical company Bayer to use pain relief in mulesing.  Mr McCowen said that the push from Bayer and others for the use of pain relief on sheep when mulesed was abhorrent and immoral at a time when adequate pain relief was not available to the majority of the worlds population.  The push to force farmers to use pain relief in everyday farm management procedures is being driven by nothing than other than a desire for greater profits and is completely unnecessary Mr McCowen said.

The  World Health Organisation report on the Access to Controlled Medications Program estimates that access to controlled medicines for pain relief is non existent or close to non existent in 150 out of 193 countries around the world.  The same report estimates that 75,000 women die in childbirth every year due to a lack of pain relief.  Other sources estimate that 80% of the world’s population do not have access to adequate pain relief.

Pain relief is not necessary in the mulesing process Mr McCowen said.  Mulesing is not cruel and has been carried out successfully by generations of farmers for many years.  It is simply immoral to propose that pain relief should be applied unnecessarily to animals when the vast majority of the world’s people do not have access to it.  The only circumstances where pain relief on animals can be justified are where improvements in productivity lead to gains in food or fibre production efficiency Mr McCowen said, those gains are yet to be demonstrated.

Mr McCowen added that the PETA campaign against the wool industry was effectively in tatters with the recent announcement by American and European retailers that they would continue to use Australian wool beyond 2010 regardless of the industries ability to phase out mulesing.  Retailers were happy with the progress being made to phase out mulesing.  Breeding sheep that do not need mulesing was the best alternative for the industry in the long term Mr McCowen said.

Efficiency1st has been running a campaign assisting consumers to encourage retailers to use more Australian wool.  Those consumers who took part in the campaign discovered that wool retailers had never agreed to stop using Australian wool Mr McCowen said.  The PETA claims of success were a complete beat up.

Mr McCowen concluded that the Australian wool industry was one of the most sustainable and environmentally responsible industries in the world, “ every Australian wool producer can be justifiably proud of their contribution to the comfort of thousands of consumers around the world with long lasting, sustainably produced and environmentally friendly wool products”.