Australia’s peak body for wool producers is preparing to make a complaint to the financiers of a popular drama series over what it says is an unfair and inaccurate attack on agriculture using taxpayers’ money.
North Shore, a murder mystery series set in Sydney, premiered on Ten in 2023 but has recently found a global audience on Netflix.
The series was made with the support of federal agency Screen Australia as well as Screen NSW.
It has been in the top 10 shows on Netflix in Australia for the past three weeks, but it is the third episode in particular that has angered sheep farmers.
The program makes references to the Australian sheep and wool industry around the practice of mulesing, a procedure in which excess skin is removed from the breech and tail of lambs to prevent flystrike.
Blowflies are attracted to the folds of sheep’s skin around it its rear. Flystrike occurs when their eggs turn to maggots, which eat into the sheep’s flesh and can cause infection and death.
In the show the practice is described as a “barbaric” practice involving “hacking huge chunks of wrinkly skin” from the sheep “without an anaesthetic”.
The actor goes on to say that “sheep get flyblown anyway”.
Characters on the show react after viewing images of mulesing carried out on a fictitious pastoral station. (Supplied: Netflix)
‘Misinformed activism’
Wool Producers Australia chief executive Jo Hall slammed the scene as “woefully ill informed and a grossly false characterisation” of mulesing, content which she said was a form of activism through entertainment.
“Mulesing is a once-for-life procedure done in the notion of lifetime welfare outcomes to stop breech flystrike,” she said.
“When it is done with pain relief, it is one of the most effective interventions that can be done for susceptible sheep.”
Almost 90 per cent of sheep producers nationally who mulesed their lambs used appropriate pain management, Ms Hall said.
“It’s unfair misinformation that has concerned us.”
Mulesing is a procedure in which excess skin is removed from a lamb’s breech and tail. (ABC Landline: Tim Lee)
Despite improvements in surgical mulesing and the development of pain-relief chemicals, the practice has been condemned by animal rights groups as cruel and unnecessary.
Australia is the only country that still allows surgical mulesing.
Ms Hall said her concern, and the concerns relayed to her from producers, was for viewers of North Shore to accept the information presented around mulesing as accurate.
“These people that I’ve been talking to all know why mulesing is conducted, but it’s those people who have no connection to industry, it’s putting us in a particularly negative light,” she said.
“Given the production was supported by both Screen Australia and Screen NSW, and the fact that it has trended so well on Netflix, we will be writing to both those organisations with complaints, because we think it is an unfair portrayal of our industry.
“Both those organisations are taxpayer-funded organisations; to have these messages that are anti industry going out is not helpful, there should be a requirement for messaging to be fact checked.”
The producer of North Shore has been contacted for comment.
After mulesing the area heals and is less likely to attract blowflies, reducing the risk of flystrike. (ABC: Laurissa Smith)
