Pork processor Danish Crown has made a pig’s ear of its green marketing, so what can you learn from its experience? By David Burrows
Boasting that your products are made from “climate-controlled pigs” was always going to be risky – and so it has finally proved for Danish Crown. Europe’s largest pig producer has just admitted the expression, used in a 2020 campaign, did not comply with marketing law. Consumers, as the country’s high court concluded, were misled about the environmental impact of the meat, with the claim not subject to any independent verification. It is also pretty vague, which is another no-no.
Worth noting, is that the court ruled the other claim used – that Danish pork is “more climate-friendly than you think” – was actually ok. This was in part because of research showing that consumers struggled to identify how polluting pork is, with most ranking it alongside beef (being non-ruminants pigs don’t produce methane like cows, so have far lower emissions – about 7kgCO2e per kilo of pork versus 60kgCO2e per kilo for beef).
Danish Crown – which dropped the round, pink labels denoting those climate-controlled pigs in 2021 – has now accepted its ban on using the phrase. And it seems to be taking the criticism constructively: “The long and thorough process in the Western High Court has led to both healthy reflections and a useful debate about the boundaries when a company needs to communicate about sustainability.”
The EU is of course trying to draw those boundaries with new rules like the green claims directive. This is timely given a rise in green claims being made on meat and dairy products in particular. Carbon negative, low-methane and regenerative meats and milks are all already being marketed.
This concerns the likes of Nusa Urbancic, CEO at Changing Markets Foundation, whose research shows how some meat and dairy companies use subtle messaging around ‘natural eating’, health and sustainable farming, as well as increasingly the “vague” term ‘regenerative’. “We urgently need regulation to address these industry tactics,” she tells me.
Here in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority have published new guidance to help companies avoid greenwashing. Their guidance, much like the claims they’re aiming to eradicate, is in places ambiguous.
Fashion retailers Asda, Asos and Boohoo have all recently been given red cards by the CMA for not following its green claims code. Each company has now agreed detailed undertakings to prevent them greenwashing again. It is prescriptive stuff, explained lawyers at DWF in a recent foodservice industry roundtable organised by Footprint. This is a national regulator telling businesses how to operate, they explained.
Hamming it up
Indeed, the undertakings include everything from restrictions on the use of imagery and pulling of all misleading claims within two months, to spot checks of 5% of new online product listings and the need to train staff on compliance. Don’t read them (or the letter to the wider sector) just before bedtime if you’re a marketer.
While we know what these brands have to do, what we don’t know is what they did wrong. That would have been more helpful given how excitable the regulators are at the moment. Food is next in the spotlight, with the results of a CMA investigation due soon. Expect more of the same: the regulators are after big fish to fry.
As for Danish Crown, it won’t be telling any more porkies but it will be hoping to keep making green claims. “[…] it is crucial for us and the rest of the business world to be able to communicate our climate actions in order to differentiate ourselves and make climate effort a good business – and we still believe this,” read a statement. “We now wish to look forward and instead focus our efforts on transitioning to a less climate-impacting production.” In other words: act, then advertise.
