WAFarmers is angered by the Australian Wool Exchange’s (AWEX) recent announcement that it will not apply a user-pay system to fund and run the Na-tional Wool Declaration (NWD) Wool Integrity Program. It would appear that producers who do not use the NWD form to state their sheep mulesing status on farm will still pay for the program.

AWEX claimed that in the absence of premiums, this would serve as a strong discouragement to growers who had ceased mulesing. The details as to how much producers will have to absorb and how the fee will be extracted to fund the program are not known. What is clear is that producers who don’t use this part of the AWEX business unit will still have to pay for those that do.

Medulated Fibre Sheep Breeds at Saleyards
WAFarmers has written to the Katanning Saleyards and Muchea Livestock Sell-ing Complex Committees asking how they plan to deal with shedding wool sheep breeds after a growing number of members have raised concern with shedding wool breed breeds of sheep (with medulated fibre) and their role in the saleyards. It is well established that contact and transference of medu-lated fibres from shedding breeds onto merinos has a damaging effect during wool processing because of the differing uptake of dyes leading to poorer quality fabric.

Enterprise Agreements
WAFarmers has written to the WAFarmers Industrial Association and the WA Shearing Contractors Association supporting the implementation of Enterprise Agreements for shearing contractors to retain working flexibilities within the industry and will assist the WA Shearing Contractors Association in promoting the agreement amongst its members.

Ovine Johne’s disease
WAFarmers is working behind the scenes with Animal Health Australia to have abattoir inspections commence at Shark Lake Abattoir (and other abattoirs in the long term), as well as assisting the Esperance Zone with information on how to apply for an Ovine Johne’s Disease (OJD) Exclusion Zone. WAFarmers has publically announced that it supports state producer representation for OJD, stating that its voice is limited by not having national representation through Sheepmeat Council and WoolProducers Australia.

Wafarmers Calls AWI to identify board skill gaps
WAFarmers welcomed the announcement of Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) Board Nomination Committee and is calling that it identifies current Board Skill gaps to assist shareholders to identify suitable Board candidates.

AWI Creates an Industry relations manager position
WAFarmers has welcomed Australian Wool Innovation’s (AWI) announcement of a newly created position, Industry Relations Manager, Ms Casey Dunn. The main responsibilities of this position will be to ensure that WAFarmers is regularly engaged and appropriately informed of AWI’s activities, and that industry views are incorporated in AWI’s consultation and planning cycles. Ms Dunn will be meeting with the WAFarmers Wool Council for the first time in July.

Meetings
The Wool Council Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 19 July 2011 commencing at 8.30 am.

The Western Australian Farmers Federation (Inc.) (WAFarmers) is the State’s largest and most influential rural lobby group. With more than 4,000 members, our job is to represent the collective opinion of primary producers and help ensure a long term future for agriculture.