Oatly ads banned over misleading meat and dairy claims

The UK advertising watchdog has banned a series of adverts by Swedish oat-based drink maker Oatly that made misleading claims about the dairy and meat industry.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 109 complaints about the TV, social media and newspaper adverts from members of the public and the campaign group A Greener World.

The ASA found four of the five Oatly claims that were challenged by consumers to be misleading and not backed up with enough evidence.

See also: Farmer wins in ‘David v Goliath’ battle with Oatly

One national newspaper advert said “climate experts say cutting dairy and meat products from our diets is the single biggest lifestyle change we can make to reduce our environmental impact”.

The ASA said consumers would understand this to be a “definitive, objective claim that was based on scientific consensus”, when instead Oatly had presented the opinion of one climate expert and omitted the word “probably” from his quote.

Paid-for Facebook and Twitter adverts that claimed “the dairy and meat industries emit more carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) than all the world’s planes, trains, cars, boats etc, combined” were also ruled misleading by the ASA.

The watchdog said the claim “overstated” the emissions from the meat and dairy industry compared to the transport industry because “equivalent parts of the life cycle had not been accounted for in the emissions figures used to support the claim”.

Oatly said it had no plans to repeat the claim and had removed social media posts that made similar claims.

TV adverts that showed children questioning their father’s decision to drink cow’s milk claimed that “Oatly generates 73% less CO2e versus milk”, however it was based only on one Oatly product and whole milk.

The ASA ruled consumers would understand this claim to encompass all Oatly products and it therefore expected to see evidence based on all Oatly products and types of cow’s milk.

Reaction

NFU dairy board chairman Michael Oakes said he was pleased the ASA upheld four of the five complaints against Oatly.

He told Farmers Weekly: “Their marketing is based on questionable evidence. Competition is healthy, but it needs to be honest and based on facts.

“There isn’t a great deal out there nutritionally better than dairy, but the competition is quite often loose with the facts to market it.”

Cambridgeshire farmer and oat grower Tom Martin said he was delighted by the rulings and said “justice had been done”.

He told the Farmers Weekly Podcast: “For me it was the injustice of it, a big corporate campaign slandering hard-working farmers.

“I was very happy to lend my voice, as many others did, saying hang on a minute this isn’t fair.”

Oatly has been banned from running the adverts complained about, but there were also calls on social media for the drink maker to issue corrections on its labels.

Although this is welcome, the misinformation has already been peddled. How about corrections being printed on their labels?https://t.co/ZZ3rdeUolK

— Ed Barker (@edbarkerAIC) January 26, 2022

Tim Knight, Oatly spokesman, said: “It’s clear that we could have been more specific in the way we described some of the scientific data.

“We’re a science-based company and take pride in being precise but we could have been clearer.”