ANIMAL welfare group opposition to lamb mulesing has been ramped up with the practice’s inclusion as a Queensland election issue and the lobbying of King Charles to support the breeding of flystrike-resistant Merino sheep.

The Alliance for Animals has released its animal welfare issue scorecard for the Queensland election on Saturday 26 October, including rating each party on their stance on the phasing out of mulesing, or live animal cutting.

And ahead of King Charles III’s visit to Australia from 18–23 October, Humane Society International Australia and HSI/United Kingdom have sought His Majesty’s endorsement for the breeding of naturally flystrike-resistant smoother bodied Merinos as “an effective and humane solution” to mulesing.

Alliance for Animals director of strategy Dr Bidda Jones said this is the first time that mulesing has been included on an alliance election scorecard.

The scorecard states that the Queensland Labor Party does not favour phasing out mulesing and the Liberal National Party’s policy is “unclear”. It list the Queensland Greens and the Animal Justice Party as supporting the phasing out of mulesing.

“We consider a range of factors when choosing policies to include in our election scorecard campaigns, including the animal welfare impact, likely support for the change, and having a clear policy ask that parties can commit to ahead of an election,” Dr Jones said.

“The inclusion of live lamb cutting in our Queensland election scorecard campaign reflects the level of pain and suffering it causes and the sad reality that, 20 years on from the wool industry committing to phase it out, this practice is still being performed on up to 80 percent of Australian sheep used for wool.

“It also follows the release of the Broken Promise report, which calls on federal and state governments to act by mandating a phase out of live lamb cutting by 2030.”

Dr Jones said the Alliance for Animals has run scorecard campaigns in five elections to date – the 2022 federal election, and state elections in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland.

“Animal welfare is increasingly important to voters with support for better standards growing as younger demographics form a higher proportion of voters.

“We’ll be continuing to bring key animal welfare policy issues to the attention of political parties and voters in 2025,” Dr Jones said.

The alliance said it has joined forces with RSPCA Queensland to show voters where the parties in Queensland stand on animal welfare.

Parties and candidates in Queensland ere contacted to find out their positions on a six key animal welfare policies: Increasing animal welfare funding, creating a state animal welfare authority, phasing out battery cages, ending puppy farming, phasing out live lamb cutting (mulesing) and removing shark nets.

King Charles is supporting a practice banned in the UK

HSI Australia’s animal welfare campaigner Georgie Dolphin said King Charles is the patron for The Campaign for Wool and a well-respected conservationist and lover of nature.

“We wanted to ensure that His Majesty was fully aware of the issue, as we seek his support for a humane solution,” she said.

“His Majesty is a keen supporter of wool and is often seen in woollen suits, kilts, jackets, scarves and hats. With Australia supplying 70 percent of the world’s apparel wool, and being a major wool exporter to the UK, we’re sure he would prefer that Australian wool wasn’t dependent on a cruel and outdated practice,” Ms Dolphin said.

Australia remains the only major wool producing country that still allows mulesing or live lamb cutting.

The animal welfare groups, with FOUR PAWS, recently released ‘The Broken Promise report’ calling out leaders of the Australian wool industry who, in 2004, promised to phase out live lamb cutting by 2010 but reneged in 2009. The group’s favour wider breeding of smoother bodied Merinos that are naturally resistant to flystrike as an effective and more humane solution to mulesing.

“No one is arguing that flystrike isn’t a problem, but it’s a problem exacerbated by breeding overly wrinkly sheep,” Ms Dolphin said.

“We want to ensure His Majesty knows that a humane, simple, and cost-effective alternative to live lamb cutting exists.

“He is inadvertently supporting a controversial practice that has been banned in the United Kingdom, and is no longer practiced anywhere else in the world, other than Australia.”

What does the wool industry think?

WoolProducers Australia chief executive officer Jo Hall said the animal rights groups can continue using their made-up terminology as it highlights how irrelevant they are.

“No government will ban live lamb cutting as there is no such thing as live lamb cutting in any legislation,” she said.

“The disclaimer on their own website says it all ‘The scorecards represent the view of the Australian Alliance for Animals, and should not be relied upon’.

“It can’t be any clearer than that – it appears that they don’t have faith in their own positions, so why would anyone else?”

An Australian Wool Innovation spokesman said the company had not comment to make on the lobbying of King Charles on mulesing and had not provided any advice to him on the issue.