Wool co declares clean credentials

Effective immediately, growers who supply the company with wool will have to sign off on a grower checklist detailing pain relief used and on-farm animal health practices.

New England Wool managing director Andrew Blanch said the push had come from inside the Australia-based New England Wool team and the company's high profile Italian clients.

"New England Wool … wants the wool-consuming-world to understand that its raw material suppliers take the utmost care with their animals and the environment," he said.

"Not enough focus or energy has been placed on promoting the sustainable nature of the wool production system in Australia -- particularly high-quality superfine wool production systems."

"I think it's something that people have been looking for."

While growers can detail their mulesing status on the National Vendor Declaration (NVD), New England Wool wanted to go further, Mr Blanch said.

"We'd been hoping that something might come from Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) or the Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) that would be a bit wider than the NVD, but we understand it's very difficult dealing with welfare issues in Australia," he said.

AWI and the AWEX were both involved in developing the scheme.

New England Wool was still ironing out the finer details of how to monitor the scheme, but there would be a random audition system in place, Mr Blanch said.