Last month, meat industry lobbying groups EBLEX and the National Sheep Association issued a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority over an advertising campaign by the Food Standards Agency. The campaign featured images of a beautifully presented lamb chop in a urinal.

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The campaign, which ran from February to March, was intended to raise consumer awareness of food hygiene and encourage the public to look into the food hygiene ratings of food outlets. However, the red meat groups claimed lamb had been singled out and that the image could damage the industry's reputation.

NSA said the Food Standards Agency's campaign risked undermining its own advertising to promote red meat. Upon filing the complaint, spokesperson George Milne described the FSA poster as an "absolute disgrace," and added "the advert… portrays lamb is the worst possible way. Sheep farmers in the UK produce lamb to such an incredibly high standard and now we are faced with this photograph of lovely lamb cutlets in the bottom of a toilet."

Supporting NSA, Farmers Union of Wales president Emyr Jones said, "Like the NSA, we are appalled that lamb has been singled out to portray such a negative and extreme message. It is plain idiocy that the repercussions of such an advertisement were not spotted by the FSA. It's little wonder that criminals were able to pass off horse meat as beef under the FSA's noses if they were too busy dreaming up inflammatory and misleading messages like this."

However, an FSA spokesperson told Farming Online in March that the meat industry had "completely missed the point," adding, "The advert does show some delicious looking lamb in a strange setting. The point is that this is about food establishments, not the food itself – We trust the intelligence of the public on this one. We don't think anyone will be put off eating lamb by this advert."

ASA rejects industry complaint

In the event, it appeared the Advertising Standards Authority was inclined to agree with FSA. The Authority dismissed EBLEX and NSA's claim outright, rejecting the groups' assertions that FSA's poster associated lamb with poor food hygiene and that it was misleading.

In its decision to dismiss the case without investigating, ASA said it was unlikely the advertisement would mislead consumers about the safety of eating lamb and doubted they would see it as a comment about the meat used, rather than the hygiene issues highlighted.

ASA upheld FSA's claims that the advert focused on the hygiene of the food outlet, not the foodstuff itself and noted that the image of the lamb cutlets was 'incidental,' used to show high quality food in an environment usually associated with poor hygiene.

Stephen Humphreys, Director of Communications at FSA commented on Wednesday, "We are pleased that the ASA rejected this complaint. The campaign was designed to challenge assumptions that an establishment's appearance alone is the best way to judge standards of hygiene. We always trusted the intelligence of consumers to realise we were making a point about the food establishments, not the food itself."

An ASA spokesperson told Farming Online that the authority had concluded that there were no grounds for further action. The spokesperson said, "Where we dismiss complaints, as we did in this instance, we close the case without investigating the claim. In this case, I can verify FSA's statement. The case was closed because there was clearly no breach of ASA codes."