A TV advertising campaign for Waitrose pork has been banned after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided that it could mislead consumers

The ads, which featured celebrity chefs Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith, claimed that pork in the retailer’s Essential Waitrose range was ‘outdoor bred,’ when the pigs had in fact spent most of their lives in sheds.

According to The Grocer, one of the ads saw Blumenthal discussing pigs’ living conditions with farmer Phil Ellis and talking about the secrets behind producing the ‘best tasting pork’.

“In my opinion, some of the best tasting pork comes from British pigs that have been outdoor bred, just like these porkers from Norfolk,” Blumenthal says in one of the banned ads.

In another ad, Blumenthal states: “Waitrose Essential pork comes from pigs that are outdoor bred. Happy pigs do make for great tasting pork.”

Marketing news source Marketing Week understands that the ASA received five complaints from members of the public, who argued that the ads misleadingly suggested that Waitrose pigs spent their whole lives outside.

In response, Waitrose claimed that ‘outdoor bred’ was a commonly-used industry term to describe pigs born in fields and kept outdoors until weaning, before being moved to ‘light and airy’ sheds.

Despite Waitrose’s defence, the ASA decided to uphold the ban as it felt that most consumers would take the term ‘outdoor bred’ at face value and assume that the pigs spent their entire lives outdoors.

In a statement quoted by The Independent, the ASA said: “We considered, particularly in the context of ads that showed pigs outdoors and referred to ‘happy’ pigs that got ‘plenty of fresh air’, that viewers were likely to understand ‘outdoor’ bred’ to mean that the pigs that were used to produce the product spent the duration of their lives outdoors.”

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

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