Proposed Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Cattle

A2.12 Standard 6.8 – Pain relief with flank spaying or webbing of cattle

The flank approach for spaying or webbing is recognised to be the most painful method of spaying.

Under proposed Standard 6.8, a person in charge must use pain relief when performing the flank approach for spaying or webbing of cattle.
The adoption of pain relief for these flank methods and their ongoing use will permit a more successful application of pregnancy control for northern cattle as the other approaches are not successful in all female cattle. Whilst pain relief is a cost, the loss of effective pregnancy control will be a greater cost to industry.
According to the cattle husbandry survey²¹⁶ 7% of businesses are involved in spaying heifers with an average of 210 heifers and with 39% using the flank or flank/webbing approach. With cows, 4% of businesses are involved in spaying cows with an average of 195 cows and with 23% using the flank or flank/webbing approach. It is not known if this is mutually exclusive and it is most likely that properties that spay heifers also spay cows.
The dose for pain relief with a non-steroidal analgesic (Ketoprofen) is 3ml for 100kg @ $1 per ml delivered including a 100% markup. Therefore for a 2-year old heifer (320kg²¹⁷) or a mature cow (420kg²¹⁸) in northern Australia the cost of pain relief would $10.54 per heifer and $13.54 per cow (including $0.44 time cost per heifer or cow and $0.50 disposables).
Public consultation question 23: Do you know the number or percentage of cattle requiring pain relief under proposed standard 6.8 for spaying or any information to improve the estimation of costs?
The incremental 10-year cost of pain relief using a non-steroidal analgesic for flank and flank/webbing spaying is estimated to be $18.42m or $12.09m in 2012-13 present value dollars, as shown in Table A2.14.
Table A2.14 – 10-year incremental cost of non-steroidal analgesic as pain relief for flank spaying and flank/webbing of cattle by state and territory under Standard 6.8 –2012-13 dollars

Jurisdiction	Business affected (w1)^219	No. heifers (a2) = (w1)*210*39%		No. cows (b2) = (w1)* 4%/7%^220*195*23%	Annual cost (d2)=(a2)*$10.54+ (b2)*$13.54	10-year cost (e2) = (d2)*10
NSW	-	0		0	$0	$0
VIC	-	0		0	$0	$0
QLD	1,346	110,223		34,491	$1,629,404	$16,294,041
SA	-	0		0	$0	$0
WA	58	4,750		1,486	$70,221	$702,215
TAS	-	0		0	$0	$0
NT	118	9,664		3,024	$142,864	$1,428,643
ACT	-	0		0	$0	$0
Australia	1,522	124,637		39,002	$1,842,490	$18,424,899
Present value 7% discount rate							$12,094,279
3% discount rate							$15,259,042
10% discount rate							$10,292,094