The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has ruled that claims made by Swedish alternative milk brand Oatly in a recent advertising campaign were "misleading" and that they had "overstated" the emissions of the meat and dairy industry.
Misleading claims
In a series of adverts last year, the company claimed that the "dairy and meat industries emit more CO2 than all the world’s planes, trains, cars, boats etc, combined."
An overstatement
The ASA ruled that this was an overstatement because they had not compared like-for-like.
The company did not take into account emissions covering the full life-cycle of transport and only factored in emissions when a vehicle is driven.
A challenge from the NFU
Figures from Defra show that emissions from UK agriculture are 10%, compared to UK transport at 27%.
We challenged Oatly on these misleading claims on social media at the time.
Complaints from the public
The investigation by the advertising watchdog was launched after complaints from 109 members of the public.
Read the full ruling from ASA.