Compassion in World Farming has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the latest advertisinig campaign by Assured Food Standards’ Red Tractor assurance scheme is misleading. The farm animal welfare organisation has questioned the validity of Assured Food Standards’ claims that its pork is ‘high welfare’.image expired

As part of its latest advertising campaign, aiming to increase the uptake of British meat, "Pork Not Porkies" posters have appeared in the UK, which assert that pork stamped with a Red Tractor logo is high welfare. Compassion in World Farming has contested this claim; the charity stated in a release on filing its complaint, “Having considered the Red Tractor standards, Compassion feels the adverts to be untrue and misleading.”

Around 80 per cent of British pigs are reared within the Red Tractor scheme, though the systems in which they are reared vary greatly from higher welfare outdoor, free range systems to more industrial conditions including, Compassion claims, “crowded barren pens, possibly without straw or other enrichment material.” The charity said that Red Tractor pork cannot be universally described as being ‘high welfare’ and doing so is unfair to farmers who rear animals to a genuinely high standard.

Joyce D’Silva, Director of Public Affairs at Compassion in World Farming commented, "We are very surprised by this claim from the Assured Food Standards. Many consumers look to labels such as The Red Tractor and trust that they are buying products from animals that have been treated well and raised humanely. However, Red Tractor standards are so minimal that it cannot claim that all its pork products are high welfare. It is unfair to mislead consumers in this way."

The charity has taken issue with several aspects of Red Tractor’s guidelines, including its standards on tail docking, the provision of rooting material, slatted flooring and farrowing crates for new mother pigs.

Responding to Compassion’s allegations, Red Tractor Assurance CEO David Clarke said, “Red Tractor is proud of its pork welfare standards and we stand by the statement in the BPEX advert.   Red Tractor pork is high welfare pork.”

"For the past twelve years pig farmers in the UK have operated to welfare standards that the vast majority of other European countries have failed to match.  According to BPEX data, even today, two-thirds of all pork and pig meat imports to the UK from the EU have been produced to standards that would be illegal in this country."