Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment has been made of whether current advertising regulations adequately protect consumers from marketing of pet supplements that imply conventional complete pet foods are nutritionally deficient without providing robust scientific evidence for those claims.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the independent regulator responsible for regulating advertising in the UK, through codes set by the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) and Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP). The government is not involved in these codes, nor in the investigations and enforcement delivered by the ASA.

The advertising codes contain robust rules regarding claims and comparisons within ads. Claims within ads which consumers are likely to regard as objective must be substantiated, or the ASA may consider these to be misleading and in breach of the codes. Marketers may make claims about the health benefits of their products provided that they hold robust clinical evidence to support them.

Where comparisons are made against identifiable competitors, ads must not mislead the consumer about the advertised or competing product, must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature of those products, and must not discredit or denigrate another product.

In April this year the ASA released specific advice about advertising pet food, including on comparative claims and denigration, with references to recent rulings. That guidance is available at https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/animals-pet-food.html.