ESG Enforcement Tracker

Key facts:

The ASA has upheld a complaint against Red Tractor, the UK’s largest farm assurance scheme, on the grounds that its television advertisement made misleading claims regarding the standard of compliance across its certified farms. The decision followed a complaint lodged by the environmental NGO River Action, which alleged that the advert, broadcast between 2021 and 2023, gave the impression of a commitment to environmental protection that was inconsistent with publicly available evidence. Although the Advertising Codes were updated in April 2025, the ASA assessed this case under the rules in force before that date.

The TV ad claimed that food carrying the Red Tractor logo was “farmed with care”, supported by “certified standards” and checks ensuring these standards were “met from field to store”. It depicted pastoral farming scenes and referenced animal welfare measures (e.g., health plans and vets). River Action argued that this amounted to an implicit environmental claim and constituted “greenwashing”. They contended that the assurance scheme could not substantiate the message, particularly considering a 2020 Environment Agency report which found that certified farms were “not currently an indicator of good environmental performance.”

Red Tractor argued that their scheme focused on food safety, animal welfare and traceability, not primarily environmental protection. Any environmental standards they did include (e.g., slurry storage, pollution prevention) was supplementary. Red Tractor noted that their farms were independently inspected every 12 – 18 months, with high compliance levels (~98%), with suspensions and withdrawals where standards were breached. In response to the Environment Agency data, this was said to be old, drew from unrepresentative samples, and did not reflect improved standards implemented in 2021. They maintained that consumers would not interpret the ad’s claims as referring to environmental performance.
The ASA upheld the complaint. It concluded that the ad’s broad claims – such as “farmed with care” and “all our standards are met” – combined with pastoral imagery, were likely to give consumers the impression that Red Tractor certification guaranteed high standards across the entire food-production process. The ASA considered that an informed minority of consumers would assume that these standards included responsible environmental practices, because environmental care is commonly understood to be an integral part of high-quality farming.

While Red Tractor did include some environmental requirements within its scheme, the ASA found that the evidence provided did not sufficiently demonstrate that members reliably complied with basic environmental legal standards. Environment Agency data from 2014 to 2024, although not fully representative, still indicated notable non-compliance among Red Tractor-assured farms. Furthermore, Red Tractor was unable to provide outcome-based evidence, such as pollution data, or detailed compliance information for high-risk catchment areas, including North Devon and the River Wye.

Although the ASA accepted that consumers would not interpret the phrase “all our standards are met” as a guarantee of full and continuous compliance, it held that both the language of “farmed with care” and the pastoral computer-generated imagery used in the advert contributed to an implied representation of environmental responsibility that had not been substantiated.

The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its existing form. It also instructed Red Tractor that, when using claims such as “farmed with care” alongside assertions that “all our standards are met,” they must clearly explain which standards are being referenced and the degree to which those standards are actually fulfilled.

River Action welcomed the decision, stating that the ruling confirmed Red Tractor had “misled the public and their suppliers” regarding the scheme’s environmental credentials and urged major retailers to scrutinise the assurances relied upon in their supply chains.

Red Tractor strongly criticised the outcome, describing the ASA’s reasoning as “fundamentally flawed”. CEO Jim Mosley argued that the advert did not make any explicit environmental claim and that the authority had departed from the usual “average consumer test”, instead relying on its own interpretation that a minority of informed viewers might misconstrue the messaging. Mosley also stated that treating pastoral imagery as an implied environmental representation could have significant consequences for other advertisers within the food and farming sectors.