Wool declaration mistakes ‘innocent’ – a media article

 

Rural Press  BY TERRY SIM |18 Oct, 2011 03:30 AM

A TREND among Australian woolgrowers of incorrectly declaring their sheep as not mulesed was “innocent”, according to AWEX quality and technical manager Dr Kerry Hansford.

On-farm inspections by AWEX between September last year and June 2011 found that 15 per cent of declarations of non-mulesed (NM) or ceased mulesing (CM) status on the National Wool Declaration were non-compliant or incorrect.

But AWEX has found a similar trend of non-compliance has continued in 2011-2012, prompting advice to AWEX members and woolgrowers on the common errors being made. However, no grower has been found to have made the same consecutive error on an NWD, Ms Hansford said.

“For the most part we believe they are innocent errors where the grower gets poor advice or someone else completes the NWD form for them.

“They are totally shocked to find out that the wool went forward to sale with a declaration on it that was incorrect,” she said.

“By and large we certainly think it is not deliberate and we are treating this, as we did in the first year, as an education phase and making sure everybody knows what they should be doing before you come down really hard on someone.”

Ms Hansford said growers who were innocently non-compliant were told they could be subject to inspection if they made subsequent ceased mulesing or non-mulesed declarations.

“In addition to that if they do put forward a declaration for that next year we will check it in the office first to see what they have declared.

“We are certainly not trying to get them to stop declaring, we would just rather they declared correctly.”

The penalty for deliberate non-compliance or a consecutive error could be “that they won’t be able to declare in the future unless they undergo another inspection (at the grower’s cost) that proves they have stopped mulesing”, Ms Hansford said. Buyers and brokers were also notified of cases of incorrect NWDs or non-compliance.

Cases of non-compliant and incorrect declarations detected included:

The NWD was completed by a person other than the owner/manager (e.g. classer, broker, relative), with non-mulesed declared despite the mob being mulesed or containing mulesed sheep. It is the owner/manager’s responsibility to ensure the NWD is completed correctly.

The Mob Mulesed question was incorrectly answered “No”, when the mob contained older mulesed sheep. There is no “allowable” number of mulesed older sheep or strays in a non-mulesed mob. Sheep which have been subject to a mulesing operation, regardless of the amount of skin removed from the breech and/or side of the tail, must be declared as mulesed. Growers who have ceased mulesing on the property can answer ‘Yes’ to the Ceased Mulesing question, but the actual mulesing status of each mob must be correctly declared.

Purchased sheep were declared as non-mulesed; despite the mob being mulesed or containing mulesed sheep. Any mulesed “bought on” sheep must be declared as mulesed.

Some growers have also incorrectly made declarations, or signed NWDs, indicating that pain relief (PR) was used at mulesing. Pain relief was only commercially from 2005, therefore only sheep six years and younger are eligible.