Vegan campaign group Viva! have been ordered to amend an advert which "misled" viewers into believing untruths about pig farming practices in the UK.
The National Pig Association (NPA), along with seven members of the public, complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ad was misleading because it featured farming methods that were no longer allowed in the UK.
The cinema advert was seen in December 2017. A pig was featured running around in a field and the voice-over stated: “All creatures can experience pleasure. She is a pig called Hope rescued by Viva. This is her dance of joy for being outdoors for the first time”.
Subsequent footage showed individual or small groups of pigs indoors behind the bars of a pen and a number of pigs in a very crowded pen. The voice-over stated: “It’s something most pigs will never know as 90% are factory farmed. Set them all free. Try Vegan.”
But now the ASA has upheld complaints by the NPA that the advertisement was infact misleading.
The claim “90% of pigs are factory farmed” was concluded as misleading because it implied that the vast majority of pigs farmed in the UK were restricted to the indoors and never experienced the outside.
ASA said that information published by Compassion in World Farming and the RSPCA stated respectively that 40% and 42% of breeding sows were kept outdoors, with their piglets staying with them until weaning was complete at between 21 and 28 days old.
After weaning, 96% would be kept indoors until slaughter at six months. ASA acknowledged that exact timings were likely to vary from farm to farm but noted from the evidence that 40–42% of breeding sows were kept outdoors and that, for those sows, their young would be with them until their weaning was complete at between 21 and 28 days.
For those pigs and piglets, while they were farmed intensively, ASA considered it was not true to say that they would never experience life outside.
ASA concluded: "The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Viva! to ensure their ads did not mislead about, for example, how animals would be accommodated in intensive farming environments."
The ruling follows a similar case from earlier this year where ASA demanded Viva! to stop its adverts which implied that drinking cow’s milk could cause cancer, concluding them to be "misleading".
