Chemical residue trends for Australian and New Zealand wool

Stephen Ranford,Chikako Van Koten,Paul Swan

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-04787-x

Abstract

Textile consumer trends towards improved product safety and high environmental standards have significantly influenced regulators in key consumer markets. The apparel wool industry sector has responded to regulators, and for three decades the Australia and New Zealand wool industries have managed advancements in ectoparasiticides and improved sheep treatments targeting high environmental, animal health and welfare standards leading to safe wool products. Australian and New Zealand chemical residue data from greasy wool have been consolidated and analysed for organophosphate, synthetic pyrethroid, insect growth regulator, neonicotinoid, macrocyclic lactone and spinosad active. Trend analysis has been applied to time domain data to evaluate advancements in ectoparasiticide technology after revising environmental, animal health and welfare standards. Analysis shows impacts from technology improvement, regulatory change and compliance by sheep farmers meeting or exceeding published European Union residue limits for regulated ectoparasiticides namely organochlorine, organophosphate, synthetic pyrethroid and insect growth regulators. Implications from advancements in ectoparasiticide technology, industry management and regulatory measures, include healthy sheep growing in clean pastoral environments with evidence of reduced wool residue levels which complement high and rising proportions of Australian and New Zealand wool fibre meeting European Union Ecolabel criteria.

Highlights

Textile consumer trends towards improved product safety and high environmental standards have significantly influenced regulators in key consumer markets
Alongside human health, are criteria assessed by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries to administer regulatory approval of agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines
Industry monitoring of ectoparasiticide residues in wool is used to measure the impact of both government and wool industry policies and practices by examining long term residue trends and determining the level of compliance with European Union (EU) pesticide residue limits

Summary

Introduction

Textile consumer trends towards improved product safety and high environmental standards have significantly influenced regulators in key consumer markets. In the case of ectoparasiticide chemicals, which are used to treat external parasites, proprietary formulations are developed to generate both high levels of treatment efficacy for well-defined periods, and known breakdown profiles for the active compounds The latter underpin the mandatory withholding period definitions in product labels, as part of the regulatory approval schemes implemented in Australia[6] and New Zealand[7]. Regulators have applied increasingly stringent environmental discharge standards to wool processors in Asia[9,10,11,12,13,14], North America[15,16] and within and across the European Union (EU)[17,18] In addition to these point of discharge regulations, consumer product eco-labels are providing an additional compliance requirement for greasy wool producers. It was implemented in 2 00919 as a voluntary ecolabel award scheme intended to promote products with a reduced environmental impact during their entire life cycle, and to provide consumers with accurate, Scientific Reports | (2022) 12:768

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