Advertising watchdog investigates RSPCA Assured adverts after complaints of ‘misleading’ claims

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The advertising watchdog has launched an investigation into adverts by the RSPCA, following complaints that claims in them are misleading.

The Advertising Standards Agency is looking into television, online and billboard versions of an advert by the much-loved animal charity featuring the slogan “For Every Kind”.

The ads under investigation include a video shortlisted for an award – the RSPCA’s rebranding Respect video, which is up for an honour at the ThirdSector charity awards ceremony on Friday.

The RSPCA, which receives 50,000 complaints of cruelty a year, set up the Assured scheme to endorse farms that its officials have inspected and judged to meet certain animal-welfare standards, including no cages, more living space and “humane” slaughter.

The charity’s RSPCA Assured logo, featuring a chicken, a pig and a fish, is used on meat and dairy products from those farms, with the aim of giving shoppers an assurance that the animals were better treated.

But The Independent has revealed a string of horrors behind closed barn doors in which animals at farms with RSPCA Assured endorsement were subjected to suffering.

They include how a worker hit pigs in the face and on their backs with a paddle as they prepared to put them into gas chambers to die; at four free-range egg farms activists said they saw “appalling” conditions with dying birds and a living hen suspended upside down, and workers at dairy farms supplying Muller and Marks & Spencer hit cows with poles, kicked them and yelled four-letter abuse at them.

A complaint submitted by AdFree Cities said the “For Every Kind” adverts were in breach of advertising codes and guidance on misleading advertising.

It said the adverts, which feature images of free-roaming farm animals with the words “Every kind of animal deserves our kindness”, omit “material information about the RSPCA’s certification of intensive farming practices and animal slaughter”.

The complaint says: “Viewers of this advert are strongly encouraged to feel that the RSPCA champions kindness, care and protection for all animals.

“The creative content is strongly focused around protection and respect. It is likely that the average person seeing these adverts would be surprised and shocked that the RSPCA simultaneously, and in return for funding, endorses large-scale animal rearing, including methods that cause distress and pain to animals, and large-scale animal slaughter.”

Awards organiser ThirdSector has praised the Respect video for its inclusivity of all animals, saying it “successfully put animal welfare at the top of the agenda by making headline news”.

Animal-rights group Animal Rising, which has investigated more than 40 farms, said the public was largely unaware that the charity included factory farms in its Assured scheme.

Earlier this year, activists from the group plastered Wallace and Gromit-themed posters on the King’s portrait, with a speech bubble reading: “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!”

Rose Patterson, of Animal Rising, said: “The scheme is incompatible with the RSPCA’s core values of protecting all animals.

“The Assured scheme has been proven time and time again to be ineffective. It’s time for the RSPCA to drop this failing scheme and lead the way to a plant-based future. It’s frankly bizarre for the world’s largest animal charity to endorse putting animals on a plate.”

Veronica Wignall, co-director at Adfree Cites, said: “With animal abuse and factory farming conditions commonplace on RSPCA Assured farms, the charity’s ads are strongly misleading.”

An ASA spokesman said: “we’ve received three complaints about this ad campaign. The complainants argue that it omits significant information about the RSPCA’s certification of businesses that use intensive farming practices through its RSPCA Assured animal-welfare assurance scheme.

“We’re currently investigating the ads and, as such, can’t comment further or provide a timeframe on when we’ll publish our findings.”

An RSPCA spokesperson said: “We are aware of this complaint and are very happy to work with the ASA, and provide any information they need. We are fully committed to complying with the CAP [Committee of Advertising Practice] code at all times and we are confident that the complaint lodged by AdFree Cities will not be upheld.

“Our For Every Kind campaign is a bold all-encompassing rallying cry, for people to rethink their relationships with animals and treat them with kindness and respect.

“If the lives of millions of animals are going to change, the way people think about them and act towards them needs to change, too. This starts with everyone being better educated about animal welfare and the rich, emotional lives animals can experience.

“The magnitude of the crisis for animal welfare is such that we need everyone, not just the traditional animal advocates, to be inspired to create a better world for every animal.

“Part of our vital work is advocating for farm animals and continually driving up standards to improve their welfare.” They added that the RSPCA was determined to keep helping improve the lives of farm animals.