Red Tractor has criticised an Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruling against one of its adverts, describing the decision as “fundamentally flawed” and warning it could have wider implications for food and farming campaigns.
The ruling relates to a television advert first broadcast in 2021, which focused on Red Tractor’s standards for traceability, food safety and animal welfare.
The complaint, lodged by environmental charity River Action in 2023, alleged the campaign misled consumers by implying environmental standards were covered and described the advert as ‘greenwashing’.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the assurance scheme had failed to provide sufficient evidence of compliance with environmental rules to substantiate its claims.
Red Tractor said the claim was based on a misinterpretation of Environment Agency data. The regulator’s then head of agriculture, Kevin Austin, had confirmed the data had been misunderstood at the time, according to the assurance body.
Chief executive Jim Moseley said the ASA had taken more than two years to reach its final position. “The ASA has been considering this complaint for over two years, during which time they’ve flipped from not upholding to upholding,” he said.
“We believe the ASA’s final decision is fundamentally flawed and misinterprets the content of our advert. If the advert was clearly misleading, it wouldn’t have taken so long to reach this conclusion.”
Although the complaint was upheld, the ASA’s action was limited. Red Tractor may continue to use the phrase “farmed with care”, but future ads must include a reference to where consumers can find more information about the specific standards involved.
Moseley added that the decision raises serious concerns. “Rather than use the accepted ‘average consumer test’, the ASA has used their own judgement that a minority of informed consumers may misinterpret the advert. We believe this is an error in law and certainly a departure from normal practice.”
He also criticised the ASA’s treatment of pastoral imagery as an implicit environmental claim, warning this “could have serious implications for other advertisers, particularly in the field of food and farming.”
River Action is now warning major supermarkets that, in its view, by using Red Tractor to reassure customers they risk complicity in misleading advertising, while pollution of the UK’s rivers continues.
