Mullengudgery, Nyngan NSW | December 15, 2023 | Farmonline - video Dailymotion

Tom Moxham from Mullengudgery, Nyngan, NSW, talking about animal welfare practices in the livestock industry.

Transcript

00:00 Hi, my name's Tom Moxham. I'm a director of the Australian Wool Growers Association,

00:11 ORGA, and also a director of Mullungadjri, where I live near Ningin. I think wool's

00:18 in a pretty good place at the moment. It's a bright spot in agriculture. The prices haven't

00:25 been fantastically high, but the market has been very stable and predictable, and the

00:31 prices have provided a lot of growers with a stable income when sheep, meat and cattle

00:43 prices have suffered during this year. So I think wool has been one of the heavy lifters

00:52 in agriculture this year. Animal welfare is one of the primary concerns of all growers

00:58 and all the organisations. The outstanding issue, I suppose, has been, or the elephant

01:04 in the room, has been mulesing over the last 20 or so years. And I think there's been great

01:13 work done in pain relief, and also the type of mulesing practice, the smaller mulesing.

01:22 So I think it's been an area that has had a lot of focus on it, and there's been a lot

01:30 of improvement in practices and products. The one issue that maybe hasn't been addressed

01:39 when it was going to be addressed, or has only been addressed by Victoria, is the mandating

01:43 of pain relief. ORGA believes that pain relief should be mandated because it puts growers

01:51 on the front foot when dealing with animal health issues. Currently, we're not seeing

01:58 great signals in the wool market for unmulesd wool. There hasn't been the great ceasing

02:03 of using of wool by fashion houses, and that's because of mulesing or animal welfare issues.

02:14 It has been raised, but I don't think it cuts through. The biggest problem is the pricing

02:20 of wool, and getting the qualities of wool out into the public, so they realise that

02:26 wool is not fast fashion, it's a product that's going to last a lifetime. So if you're going

02:35 to buy a piece of wool, it may cost a little bit more, but the lifetime use that you're

02:41 going to get out of that garment far outweighs that initial cost. And so getting that message

02:49 out to the broader consumers that are so used to fast fashion and synthetic fibres. The

02:56 other thing is, I think if people realise, a lot of people don't really know where wool

03:01 comes from, and if they realise that 50% of it is sequestered carbon from the atmosphere,

03:08 it's not oil from the ground, that's just taking carbon out of the ground that's already

03:16 sequestered and then making it into a product that will not break down, ever, in your lifetime

03:23 or whatever. Whereas wool is taking carbon from the atmosphere via grass and producing

03:32 a product that will last you a lifetime. So it's eco-credentials are just incredible.