Red Tractor Ad Banned for Misleading Environmental Claims
Badges are a convenient way to switch off thinking. A logo gives shoppers permission to stop asking questions. The Red Tractor scheme was designed to provide that permission. This week, the Advertising Standards Authority finally said the quiet part out loud: Red Tractor’s advert exaggerated environmental standards and misled the public. The ad is now banned unless changed. That matters, not because an ad got pulled, but because a whole marketing machine just slipped a cog.
Red Tractor told viewers that food carrying the logo was “farmed with care” and that “all our standards are met from field to store.” River Action challenged the message, presenting evidence that Red Tractor farms were not an indicator of good environmental performance. After a long investigation, the ASA agreed. The watchdog said Red Tractor provided insufficient evidence its members even met basic environmental law, let alone delivered good outcomes.
When pressed, Red Tractor’s CEO said the quiet part louder. The scheme’s core purpose is food safety, animal welfare and traceability, not the environment. He also confirmed Red Tractor does not know whether its farms comply with environmental law. Meanwhile, major supermarkets have been trading on the environmental aura of that logo. Tesco has publicly linked Red Tractor with “environmental protection.” Morrisons has done the same. This is how greenwash works. One side issues vague comfort. The other side sells it.
The environmental record is not a rounding error. An Environment Agency analysis found that a majority of the most serious pollution incidents from 2014 to 2019 occurred on Red Tractor farms. That sits alongside a wider parliamentary finding that agriculture is one of the main reasons 40% of English rivers fail basic health standards. Slurry in the water and pesticides in the runoff are not abstract concepts. They are fish kills, dead zones and poisoned habitats that destroy the lives of free living animals who rely on those waterways.
If the environment claim has been punctured, what about the promise of care for animals themselves. Here is the problem with badge-based reassurance. Red Tractor is owned and funded by the industry it certifies. Farmers pay to join. The scheme’s income depends on keeping members on board. There is a built-in conflict of interest. Inspections are infrequent and often announced. Paperwork passes for scrutiny. Reforms are framed as “continuous improvement.” Meanwhile, undercover investigations keep showing the public what marketing obscures.
Viva!, Animal Equality and Animal Justice Project have documented scenes that make a mockery of the word care. Repeated investigations across multiple Red Tractor farms have revealed emaciated dairy cows with legs shackled to prevent them falling, calves discarded like rubbish, birds with broken wings, ammonia burns on the legs of fast-grown chickens, turkeys kicked and stamped during catching, pigs with prolapses and hernias, piglets’ tails cut and teeth clipped, and dead bodies left among the living. Whenever cameras are placed, the same pattern appears. Not a few bad apples. A production model that treats sentient beings as units.
The response is as predictable as the footage. Sometimes Red Tractor suspends accreditation for a season, then reinstates it once the headlines fade. Sometimes it declares compliance after a “spot check.” Sometimes it insists the footage is not representative. What never changes is the underlying setup: animals as property, bred for yield, confined for efficiency, killed on schedule, their bodies moved through a supply chain that values speed and uniformity. A label cannot convert a system built on domination into a system of care. It can only distract us from what the system does.
Even at the level of rules on paper, the standards are thin. The basic Red Tractor tier barely creeps above the legal minimum. Farrowing crates that imprison mother pigs are allowed. All-year zero grazing for cows is allowed. Calf hutches that isolate babies during crucial development are allowed. Mutilations that would be unthinkable for a dog or a cat are routine for pigs, goats and sheep. Fast-growing chicken breeds that outpace their own skeletons remain the norm. The scheme presents “access to food and water” as a welfare achievement. Providing the bare essentials of life is not a moral triumph. It is the floor.
This is not an argument for better stickers. This is a call to be honest about what certification does. Assurance schemes exist to stabilise confidence in a violent system. They manage public anxiety. They help people keep buying. When campaigns expose another horror behind the label, the scheme pledges a review, drafts an update and carries on. The animals are still property. Free living animals still lose rivers, hedgerows and food webs to slurry, pesticides and feed crops. The logo still asks you to trust the very people turning individuals into commodities.
So let’s drop the theatre. If a scheme cannot even prove compliance with basic environmental law, it cannot be a steward of rivers. If a scheme that certifies confinement, mutilation and killing calls this care, then the language itself is the problem. If supermarkets leverage that language to sell reassurance, they are not partners in sustainability. They are the marketing department of exploitation.
What follows from that. First, stop looking for a better sticker to cleanse the purchase. Reject the idea that a mark of “assured” can convert domination into respect. Second, stop letting retailers outsource ethics to industry clubs. Ask the only question that matters. Was someone used. Was someone owned. Was someone killed for this. If the answer is yes, a logo cannot make the act humane, sustainable or kind. It can only make it palatable.