An advertising ban on animal products as food?

Animal products as food place a greater burden on the environment than plant-based foods. Greenpeace Switzerland is therefore calling for an advertising ban on meat, dairy products, and eggs through a petition.

Last year, 86.5 million animals were slaughtered in Switzerland, Swiss Animal Protection recently wrote in a press release. Compared to the previous year, this represents an increase of four percent. The meat industry will certainly regard this as a success: advertising campaigns are clearly having an effect. Retailers and meat marketers such as the cooperative Proviande invest correspondingly large sums in advertising for meat and other animal products. And notably with federal funds: the advertising campaigns are financed each year with several million francs of taxpayer money.

Animals are rarely seen on screen in meat advertising; when they do appear, they are referred to as a “product.” The production steps involved in making meat are also almost never shown. By contrast, advertising for dairy products such as cheese and butter frequently features live animals in an idealised landscape of wide open spaces and lush greenery. Advertising for eggs highlights the food itself and its versatility, without depicting chickens or the conditions in which they are kept.

Retailer advertising focuses on grilling, which is portrayed as traditional and sociable. Meat is generally still presented as the main component of a meal and, above all, as a normal and much-loved food. The vast majority of advertisements place price at the forefront. They avoid explicit statements about the product, its origin, the animals, or the production process. Stereotypes remain very much present.

Coop and Migros employ a fairly similar advertising style in some of their product lines. By emphasizing relaxed moments with family or friends, they appear to want to represent the entire Swiss population. However, they fail to avoid stereotypes around gender, Swiss values, and traditions. This type of advertising shifts attention away from the product and onto the consumers, their habits, and their lifestyle. Aldi and Lidl, for their part, focus almost exclusively on price reductions (more than 90% of their commercials). They never show animals, their origins, or their natural environments. As a general rule: the more attention is diverted away from the product, the more questionable the product and its production.

Greenpeace Switzerland now wants to change this and is launching a petition calling for an advertising ban. The background is that animal products place a greater burden on the environment than plant-based foods. Advertising such products is incompatible with the climate and biodiversity crisis and the resulting global injustice, the organization argues in a press release.

With the petition, Greenpeace is calling on parliament to ban advertising for meat, dairy products, and eggs by retailers and industry organizations. Advertising by farmers selling directly to consumers would remain permitted. Specifically, the petition calls for a ban on:

• Advertising for eggs, dairy products, and meat by retailers and industry organizations. Farmers advertising their own products would not be affected by the ban.
• Sponsorship at public events, venues, in news magazines, and other publications.
• Lobbying in schools, recreational clubs, and similar organizations. This would include, for example, teaching materials produced by industry organizations such as Swissmilk.
• Subsidies for advertising animal products that harm the climate and biodiversity in their production and husbandry, or that violate human rights!

The petition can be signed here