WA lags behind the rest of the country in providing a Property Identification Code, while deadline looms

WA is lagging behind the rest of the country when it comes to providing a Property Identification Code to Australian Wool Testing Authority as a mandatory testing deadline looms. Wool brokers must ensure a Property Identification Code is provided for grower wool in order to obtain a wool testing certificate from January 1 next year, an industry bid to enhance farm-level traceability in the wool industry. At the end of 2024-25 financial year, just 50 per cent of the bales tested by AWTA were accompanied by a PIC declaration from brokers. According to AWTA, Queensland heads the declaration rates for the current financial year to date at 86.5 per cent, followed by New South Wales at 75.2 per cent and South Australia at 73.6 per cent. Meanwhile in WA, the percentage of bales with PIC were at 55.4 per cent. Australian Wool Traceability Hub program manager John Billing said while the voluntary participation has been encouraging to date, it falls shorts of the coverage needed for truly effective emergency response capabilities. To ensure a swift and comprehensive Emergency Animal Disease response, industry experts determined that more than 90 per cent PIC availability was necessary. PICs were already essential to be able to sell or move livestock on national vendor declarations. Given this, the wool industry identified that PICs could be utilised in a voluntary capacity for EAD planning within the wool industry from 2019. A traceability study conducted by WoolProducers Australia in 2021 identified significant shortfalls in EAD capabilities within industry, which was followed up by a simulation exercise called Project Argonaut — a desktop audit of an EAD outbreak. Mr Billing said key recommendations for improvement included increasing the industry’s supply ability to locate and trace wool bale movements along the domestic supply chain using PIC. “Since 2021, it was hoped that industry adoption would increase organically to a level of above 90 per cent so that we’d have the coverage we need for an effective response plan, but that hasn’t happened voluntarily,” he said. “So the industry itself, through Wool Industries Australia, decided that PIC declaration must be mandated in order to get to that level. “An implementation date of the 1st of January 2026 was put in place to give the industry time to transition.” Mr Billing said while WA was tracking behind other States, declaration rates had slowly improved year-on-year. In the 2023-24 financial year, WA declarations on bales were at 23.3 per cent, then jumped to 36.3 per cent in the 2024-25 financial year. “Up until this season, PICs and EAD response is something that hasn’t been front of mind because of the significant challenges presented by the live sheep export ban and contracting wool production,” Mr Billing said. “I am confident that come January 1, WA declaration rates will be back in line with the rest of the country.”