Wool's new leader is desperately trying to move his industry beyond mulesing.
Australian Wool Innovation chairman Brian van Rooyen won't even mention the name of global animal activist group that this week re-launched its campaign against Australian wool.
"We are doing all we possibly can to appease animal liberationists of all forms," Mr van Rooyen said.
"We do look after our animals and we will have a mulesing solution by the end of 2010, now let's get out there and sell this great fibre to the world as it will be market forces in the end that will fix this."
While senior AWI staff were being grilled at the Senate Estimates meeting in Canberra this week over the handling of the mulesing crisis under Ian McLachlan’s chairmanship, Mr van Rooyen was overseas trying to get wool moving again.
In an open letter to retailers and brand partners send last week, he spelt out the progress it was making with alternatives, having spent $14 million so far and another $10 million over the next three years.
The letter states how the issue was evolving on farms across Australia, with a WA Department of Agriculture survey suggesting up to 32pc of lambs born in Australia this year will not be mulesed and 28pc of sheep farms will not be undertaking the practice, while 11.5pc of the wool clip will be from non-mulesed animals in 2008.
AWI is also standing firm behind the controversial breech clips which animal activists have now taken offense to and Mr van Rooyen said a significant number of growers were going to use the clips this year.
While on farm clip trials finished some months ago, data is still being processed.
"There are a million bits of data that need to be entered into a program and unfortunately the first organisation we had to handle it didn’t do a very good job. I can tell you the initial data suggests the clips are doing a very good job. They will suit some growers but not all."
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