Meatless Farm Co advert pulled following complaint from UK farming body
02/12/2021
The Meatless Farm Company has withdrawn its adverts following a complaint made by the UK-based Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The adverts, which ran across social media during October, suggested going plant-based boosted energy and mental and physical health.
AHDB filed the complaint to the ASA as the adverts did not comply with advertising codes, specifically that good health claims must be supported by authorised health claims or made by a national medical or nutrition body or health charity.After reviewing, the ASA agreed the adverts broke their advertising rules and requested Meatless Farm to no longer use the adverts.
The complaint forms part of a body of work carried out by AHDB to challenge misinformation, provide UK-specific evidence to the media, and to ensure a level playing field within advertising.
Earlier this year, AHDB contacted Oatly following its ‘Help Dad’ campaign to highlight inaccuracies in its claim “global livestock emit more GHG emissions than all transport combined”. Oatly corrected the claim.
AHDB’s head of media and PR, Phil Maiden explains, “Advertising rules are there to ensure fairness and transparency for consumers, in which AHDB takes an enormous amount of time and effort to ensure compliance. This very much proved invaluable following the 500 complaints made against our own We Eat Balanced TV advert earlier this year.
“This most recent result is excellent for AHDB and our levy payers, who by all accounts really value the work we do in this area. We continually work to challenge misinformation in the media and advertising, as well as working with the media to encourage balanced reporting and the use of UK based facts and data.”
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