Supermarket's ad at height of crisis tarred all food retailers and suppliers when relatively few instances had been identified, says ASA
Tesco has been criticised by the advertising watchdog for claiming that the horsemeat scandal affected the entire food industry.
The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled that an ad run by Tesco in February, at the height of the food crisis, "implied that all retailers and suppliers were likely to have sold products contaminated with horsemeat" when "relatively few instances of contamination had been identified at the time".
The ad now banned by the ASA, entitled "What burgers have taught us", said: "The problem we've had with some of our meat lately is about more than burgers and bolognese. It's about some of the ways we get meat to your dinner table. It's about the whole food industry."
Two people, including an independent butcher, complained that the ad was misleading because it implied there were issues with meat standards across the whole food industry, unfairly denigrating suppliers who had not been involved in the supply of mislabelled products.
The news comes at a sensitive time for the UK's biggest supermarket as it attempts to rebuild its reputation and market share in the wake of the scandal and problems with customer service. It recently launched a high profile ad campaign called "Love Every Mouthful" in a bid to highlight the quality of its food after promising to source more meat from the UK and Ireland and step up testing to avoid future contamination.
Tesco's share price plummeted in January after tests carried out by Ireland's food watchdog identified traces of horsemeat in burgers sold in its stores, as well as Iceland, Aldi and Lidl.
Tesco launched an internal investigation and placed a series of national newspaper ads apologising for the incident and explaining how it planned to change.
In response to the ruling Tesco said it accepted that not all those involved in the food industry had been implicated in the sale of products containing horsemeat. Rival supermarkets including Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose were never found to have sourced food contaminated with horsemeat.
However Tesco said it had not operated in a vaccuum and the meat contamination problem it and others had encountered was due to systemic failings in the food supply chain. It submitted opinion and evidence from an expert to back that view, which the supermarket said was supported by the actions of the European commission and planned legislation on the supply chain which would apply to the whole European food industry.
A spokesman said: "We are disappointed with this decision, but accept that the ASA has taken a very literal view of the wording in the advert. We think our customers understood that our aim with the advert was to set out the action we had taken in relation to the horsemeat crisis and to acknowledge the fact the issue had serious consequences not just for Tesco, but for the whole of the food industry."
The ASA said the ad made the "definitive statement" that the crisis was "about the whole food industry" and concluded that consumers would understand that it referred to all food suppliers rather than Tesco alone. However it said the ad did not denigrate other companies because it did not name any particular supplier.
Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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