Ad watchdog asks Red Tractor to clarify social media posts

The UK’s advertising watchdog has challenged Red Tractor to explain social media posts claiming its assured wheat is traceable back to individual British farms.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has asked Red Tractor, the UK’s largest food and farm assurance scheme, to clarify the claims after it received six complaints about one Twitter post and one Facebook post which were published last autumn.

One complaint was made by the Farming Forum, which was co-founded by Staffordshire grower Clive Bailye.

See also: Opinion: Red Tractor still makes sense for cereal producers

On 21 September last year during British Food Fortnight, in a Twitter post headed “Why buy British wheat flour?”, Red Tractor said: “Did you know all Red Tractor wheat requires a passport for supply chain traceability?

“This is part of proving it has met our rigorous certified standards and is traceable from farm to pack.”

Red Tractor made a similar post the same day on its Facebook page in which it stated that Red Tractor assured wheat was “fully traceable from farm to pack”.

The watchdog said many of the complainants understood that “wheat grain from multiple farms was mixed before being turned into flour”.

They had questioned whether the claim that Red Tractor wheat “is fully traceable from farm to pack” was “misleading and could be substantiated”.

Red Tractor response

A Red Tractor spokesman said: “Red Tractor is proud to work on behalf of our farmer members, promoting their assured British food and the world-class standards they farm to.

“We never intentionally mislead about any aspect of our scheme, but occasionally mistakes are made. In this case a typo was overlooked, where the letter ‘s’ was missed in the word ‘farms’, putting one social media post at odds with our consistent messaging on the ability to trace produce back to assured farms.

“It is disappointing that a post designed to promote British farmers has been manipulated as means to undermine our industry’s credibility at this especially challenging time.”

NZ complaint

Meanwhile, the ASA is investigating one additional complaint about an infographic Red Tractor shared on its Twitter page on 21 October last year which highlighted key differences in the legal farming practices between the UK and New Zealand.

The Twitter post included a table comparing farm standards in the UK and New Zealand, including livestock transport times and the use of CCTV in abattoirs. The complainant, who has not been named, has challenged whether claims about farming standards in New Zealand in the post were “misleading and could be substantiated”.

The ASA has written to Assured Food Standards, which runs the Red Tractor scheme, and asked for its response to the complaints.

An ASA spokesman said: “We can confirm that we’ve received seven complaints [related to the two issues] and are currently investigating the ads in question.”