The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) has received just two complaints from individuals in relation to the latest Go Vegan World’s 2023 campaign for Ireland.
An estimated 120 advertisements were scheduled to run on buses and billboards nationwide as part of the Go Vegan World campaign which highlighted vegan lifestyle choices and emission claims.
The campaign has come under fire from some of the country’s largest farming organisations and politicians who have described it as “misleading”.
Opposition to the vegan group’s advertising campaign was raised both in the Dáil this week and also by Tim Cullinan, president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), at the association’s annual general meeting.
The IFA president said a “small minority” was constantly trying to undermine farmers.
“We live in an era where we have full accountability for every penny our politicians spend during election time.
“Meanwhile, we have a secret society called ‘Go Vegan World’ spending hundreds of thousands on adverts to undermine our sector.
“Nobody knows where the money comes from. When we complained to the Advertising Standards Authority in 2019, they washed their hands of it.”
Cullinan has called on the government to now “regulate this space” and said any organisation “running a political campaign must show where their money is coming from”.
Vegan advertisements
According to the ASAI, because the content of the Go Vegan World’s advertisement is “not commercial content, it is not within the remit of the ASAI code”.
The code does not not apply to marketing communications “whose principal purpose is to express the advertiser’s position on a political, religious, industrial relations, social or aesthetic matter or on an issue of public interest or concern”.
Separately, the deputy leader of the Rural Independent Group, Mattie McGrath, told the Dáil that the group was “concerned” to see advertisements from the Go Vegan World campaign on Dublin Bus and Galway city buses.
“This is a rural country,” the Tipperary TD said.
“The misleading advertisements are damaging to what has been good farming practice and husbandry over decades, and to our food chain, food supply and thousands of jobs.
“Who allowed for these? We are told it lies with Dublin Bus. Is the Minister for Transport or National Transport Authority responsible? Where is this craziness going to stop? Who is paying for these advertisements?”
He described the advertisements as an “attack on rural Ireland, our way of life and our primary industry, agriculture”.
Independent TD for Laois-Offaly, Carol Nolan, has also called on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Minister for Transport to take action over the vegan ads which she described as an “attack and false information on farming”.