Waitrose outdoor pig adverts banned

A Waitrose advertising campaign, claiming all of the retailer’s pork and bacon came from outdoor bred pigs, was misleading, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

The adverts did not clarify that, although born outdoors, pigs were then reared indoors.

Television adverts showed, chefs, Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith, with pigs that wandered outdoors in a field while a farmer fed them.

Mr Blumenthal said in the TV clip: “Waitrose essential pork comes from pigs that are outdoor bred.”

Adverts in the press campaign included text stating, “all essential Waitrose pork and bacon comes from British outdoor-bred pigs”.

The ASA received five complaints which challenged whether the adverts misleadingly implied Waitrose’s pork came from pigs that spent the duration of their lives outdoors.

Waitrose argued that “outdoor bred” had a recognised meaning and that insisted it had not misled the public.

“It said the public understood that pigs were born in fields, where they were kept until weaning, and then they were moved indoors, into light and airy sheds with straw.”

But, while the ASA acknowledged the phrase was a term that might be commonly understood in the pig farming industry, it said that the average viewer was unlikely to be aware of its particular meaning.

An ASA spokesman said: “We considered that as the adverts showed pigs outdoors, viewers were likely to understand outdoor bred to mean the pigs spent the duration of their lives outdoors.

“Because that was not the case, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”

The adverts have been banned in their current form. The retailer has been told to ensure future marketing communications were not misleading.