Tesco sausages TV advert banned by regulator

An advert for Tesco-branded sausages has been banned by the UK's advertising regulator for misleading viewers that the meat used came from pigs bred outdoors.

The TV ad, for Butcher's Choice Sausages, featured scenes of pigs roaming in a field, as well as standing in a hay barn and following a farmer down a lane.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received four complaints that the ad was "misleading" because the meat used for Tesco's sausages came from pigs that were bred and reared indoors.

Tesco denied that the ad was misleading, claiming that the pigs had been reared to domestic and international agreed standards of husbandry and welfare. The supermarket giant also claimed that the farmer shown in the ad was one of its suppliers.

The ASA acknowledged that the term "outdoor bred" had an industry-wide recognised meaning that pigs were born in fields, kept there until weaning, then moved indoors.

However, it said that the ad misleadingly suggested that the pigs were "reared in an unrestricted environment", and therefore ruled that it "must not be broadcast again in its current form".

"We noted that in all scenes the pigs were shown to be in a spacious and free environment. In particular, we noted that the pigs were shown wandering unrestricted outside and, within the indoor barn scene, the barn door was shown to be open and the pigs' movement unrestricted," said the ASA.

"In that context, we considered that consumers were likely to interpret the ad to mean that the pigs used to make the Butcher's Choice sausages were reared in an unrestricted environment and had access to outdoor pasture. Since we understood that that was not the case, we concluded that the ad was misleading."

A Tesco spokesperson said in a statement: "We're a bit baffled by this ruling. The farmer featured is a Tesco supplier and produces some of the pork featured in our ad. We genuinely don't see how the ASA can say an ad showing a genuine Tesco farmer can be misleading."

Today's ASA ruling is similar to another judgement against Waitrose in October last year, in which a Heston Blumenthal-fronted commercial was banned for making misleading claims about pork.