WoolProducers to address industry during Wool Week

Australia’s peak wool and farming organisations will gather in Melbourne from 5-7 September to celebrate Wool Week, hosted by the Australian Wool Industries Secretariat.

The President of WoolProducers Australia (WPA), Geoff Power, said the industry had flourished for some 200 years and had developed the world’s finest merino flocks and produces the world’s best quality wool.

Mr Power said wool was often overlooked or forgotten in the glare of the commodities boom, but wool continues to be a priceless mainstay and dependable backbone of Australia’s rural industry, ranking alongside the grains industry. Australia’s 57,000 wool growers who pay wool levies earn the nation $2.7 billion a year.

WPA will give an Animal Health and Welfare presentation on 6 September covering some of the most volatile or difficult challenges facing the modern national wool industry: measures to tain ovine Johne’s disease, mulesing, sheep standards and guidelines, livestock biosecurity, animal health and disease surveillance.

WPA Directors are all wool growers and they represent the six state farming organisations, sit on some 50 boards and work with industry and government for the benefit of Australia’s most iconic farming industry.

“We are very proud to share Wool Week with Australia’s farming and wool industry elite in order to seek better ways of protecting our great wool industry,” Mr Power said. 

“Wool Week is the one occasion of the year when wool and farming representatives are in one room at the same time. But behind the scenes we collaborate the entire year through.”

Mr Power said WPA would launch its 2012 Annual Review during the presentation. “This will be the most informative and detailed account of wool producing in Australia that is available,” he said. “Reading through the 2012 WPA Annual Review you will find many different insights and perspectives on Australia’s wool industry from health and welfare, disease control, wool quality and standards, research marketing and export.

“Contributions to this 2012 Annual Review have come from all areas of industry and this reflects the sense of unity of purpose that brings us together so often and on so many fronts.

“Wool and farming organisations provide contemporary perspectives on some of the consuming issues that have dominated our great industry in the past year, including ovine Johne’s disease, the fluctuating wool market, sheep sales, animal predation, and other diseases and market pitfalls. This diversity of views mirrors the breadth of the challenges we face on behalf of Australian wool producers and the great benefits we seek to achieve for farmers and for the broader agricultural community.