Honest, Decent and Legal
…and that’s more than can be said for the way the Advertising Standards Authority handles complaints against Viva!, says Tony Wardle
There’s a new game afoot for people who want to stop Viva! from campaigning – complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). You might have thought that the ASA’s role was to protect vulnerable people against dodgy double- glazing salesmen but not a bit of it. This unaccountable body has decreed that almost every piece of literature we produce constitutes an advertisement. As a result, all our campaign leaflets and posters are now ranked alongside porno chat-line ads and pyramid-selling schemes.
So puerile are some of the complaints they accept against us that the temptation is to ignore them – but if you do, they automatically find against you and can prevent you from placing any genuine advertising, anywhere.
The first-ever complaint against us involved a kangaroo leaflet headlined Kick the hooligans out of football. Help end football violence – stop kangaroo killing. It explained how sales of kangaroo skin to sports shoe manufacturers is a driving force behind kangaroo slaughter. The ASA said (please try not to laugh) that our words implied that stopping kangaroo killing would put an end to soccer thuggery – and this was untrue. I replied:
“Not even on a bad Monday morning with sleep deprivation and a hangover could you possibly interpret the copy the way you have. It’s called a play on words.”
This was a rare occasion because we won. But there was a second complaint against the same leaflet, which showed gutted kangaroos hanging in a line from hooks, looking very similar to carcasses in a butcher’s shop. This image, the ASA claimed, was ‘violent and disturbing’. I asked whether butcher’s windows or the promotional leaflets from supermarkets – showing dead carcasses of chickens and bloody leg portions, buttock slices and minced flesh from lambs, pigs and cattle – were violent and disturbing. Clearly not, because the ASA found against us.
The ASA also objected to a line of copy which said: ‘Sports shoe manufacturers are causing the slaughter of these gentle animals.’ The Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia (KIAA) – responsible for the kangaroo kill – claimed the statement was untrue because no kangaroos were shot for just their skin, which was a by-product of the meat trade and it followed that sports shoe manufacturers were not responsible for any deaths.
We were able to show that the KIAA had lied to the ASA and that about 25 per cent of all killing was solely for skins and that skin sales also made a vital contribution to the profitability of meat and pet food slaughter. We also obtained a statement from the KIAA which said:
“Kangaroo leather is used to make the best soccer boots because
it’s the strongest, light-weight leather in the world. This market
is vital to the kangaroo industry. Without it underpinning skin prices
the entire industry would be at risk.”
Game, set and match to us, you would have thought. Not a bit of it! We lost because the ASA said we had given the impression that sports shoe manufacturers were responsible for the slaughter of all kangaroos. How about that for perverting the English language and for rewarding an industrial liar? We were outraged and asked for the case to be considered by the Independent Reviewer of ASA Adjudications – Sir John Kaines. It didn’t do much good because he refused.
The next two complaints were about our tongue-in-cheek sausage leaflet. The
great British Banger – makes you heart go pop. It included
the copy:
“One in three men and one in four women will die of heart disease. The British sausage is perfectly designed to help them on their way. Eating animals is one of the main reasons why heart disease, clogged arteries, high blood pressure and strokes are at epidemic proportions… high fat, high cholesterol, high animal protein foods such as sausages carry much of the blame. Vegetarians, on the other hand, are much less likely to develop these killer diseases and face the prospect of living longer than meat eaters.”
These health claims, said the ASA, were inaccurate and unduly alarmist. We submitted scientific reviews from the world’s leading health bodies which, between them, referred to more than 400 scientific papers. And a fat lot of good it did us.
The ASA ruled that our statistics for heart deaths were inaccurate; we had provided no proof that meat eaters were more at risk of degenerative diseases than vegetarians and no proof that vegetarians were healthier than meat eaters and likely to live longer – nor that animal protein was damaging to health. When I angrily responded that we had provided 400 scientific references to support our claims, I was told that we had failed to provide any scientific papers and therefore had provided no proof. Reviews of world scientific literature by the World Health Organisation, American Dietetic Association, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and British Medical Association are not scientific papers according to the ASA. How do you win against such ignorance of accepted scientific practice? With great difficulty!
There was also an objection to a picture of a dead pig on the same leaflet. Over 40,000 were distributed and Viva! received no complaints – the ASA just one. Despite this, the finding against us was that it would cause serious or widespread offence. Just one person, it seems, has the power to veto your campaign materials.
We appealed to the independent reviewer again and this time Sir John conceded. So often did we correspond over the ensuing weeks that I half expected an invitation to dinner or at least a birthday card from him. One by one, I got almost all the ASA’s findings overturned. Our figures for heart fatalities – correct! The greater health risks to meat eaters – correct! That animal protein is damaging – correct! That vegetarians are healthier – correct! All that was left was the ‘offensive’ dead pig and he refused to budge on that.
And then the sting in the tail. The ASA managing committee could, said Sir John, ignore him completely and stick with their original judgments against us. So much for independent arbitration! And that’s precisely what they did, considerably watering down their wording but maintaining the ‘guilty’ verdict because ‘the leaflet would be interpreted as implying that very serious health problems were likely to arise from the eating of any meat even within the safe limits set out by the WHO’.
The same old word trickery once again. No one with an IQ higher than three could have interpreted our copy in this way.
The most recent farce was a series of 16 complaints from the KIAA involving all our kangaroo campaign literature. I won’t go through them all because by now you must have a pretty clear picture of how things work. However, some were ludicrously trivial whilst others were deadly serious. The most outrageous was duplication of the complaint that sports shoe manufacturers cause the death of kangaroos – only this time, the ASA found for us on the basis of precisely the same evidence. So much for objectivity!
The most worrying finding was against our claim that the constant killing of the largest animals destroys the process of natural selection and has the potential for eventual extinction. According to the ASA’s code of practice, an ‘advertiser’ must have written proof of any claims they make. You cannot prove something as complex as extinction but you can provide evidence that your claims are based on reputable scientific opinion. And that’s what we did, with statements from wildlife veterinarian, Dr John Auty, and Dr Ian Gunn, head of the Animal Gene Storage Research Centre, Australia.
These were rejected on the basis that they failed to disprove the KIAA’s claim (supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service – NPWS) that their ‘scientific’ monitoring would show when kangaroo populations were falling dangerously low and action could be taken to avert the crisis. Similar claims, of course, have been made for fish and proved to be nothing more than bubble gum. We lost this one a few months ago and just this week obtained leaked Australian government documents showing that ‘kangaroo populations have slumped so badly that there are not enough to satisfy the demands of the kangaroo industry’. The result is ‘deep concern’.
Has the government reduced the 4.4 million kill quota as a result? No – it has opened up new areas previously spared from killing. This decision has prompted fury from one of its own kangaroo advisers who describes it as ‘unjustifiable and unacceptable’ as there are small numbers of kangaroos in these areas.
So much for the assurances of an industry with a vested interest in the killing and a Government department (NPWS) funded entirely out of proceeds from the kill. Everything we warned against is coming to pass.
Even though we disagree with them, we can understand the ASA’s insistence that the inserts we place in magazines constitute advertising (see page 9). But they have also decreed that even the leaflets or posters available on weekend stalls, which people take voluntarily, are also advertising. The only materials which are not are those which are requested by post. In the opinion of our patron Michael Mansfield QC, this is a distortion of the advertising code of practice and has serious implications for freedom of speech.
One of our own complaints against the RSPCA’s advertising for its commercial Freedom Food label gives a clue as to what drives the ASA’s thinking. The word ‘freedom’, says the RSPCA’s copy, means freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from pain injury and disease, freedom from fear and distress, freedom from discomfort and freedom to express normal behaviour. As their logo appears on factory-farmed pig meat, chicken and eggs, at least four out of five of these so-called freedoms simply do not apply, no matter how liberally you interpret them. Not so, says the RSPCA – these freedoms are ‘aspirational’, something they hope one day will be achieved. Nowhere in their copy will you find the word ‘aspirational’– but our complaint was rejected, nevertheless.
Compare this to how the ASA interprets our copy and you see a determination to protect the interests of commercial organisations at the expense of those campaigning against them. But did we really expect anything else?