Milk advertising and the requirement for reliable consumer information

Abstract

The way advertising messages are created and their content is subject to both national and EU regulations. With regard to the provision of food information to consumers, Regulation No1169/2011, which stipulates in Article 7(1) that food information should not be misleading as to the characteristics of the food is essential. According to Article 7(2) of the Regulation, ‘Food information shall be accurate, clear and easy to understand for the consumer’. Infringement of the obligation to provide consumers with reliable, truthful and complete information, under national regulations, constitutes an infringement of Article 24(2)(2) of the Act on Competition and Consumer Protection and, as such, constitutes a practice infringing the collective interests of consumers. The motives behind adoption of Regulation No 1169/2011 by the Member States, and in particular the attention paid to environmental, social and ethical considerations in the choices made by consumers, are important in view of the subject-matter of this Article, as public awareness of the conditions under which animals are reared, transported and slaughtered is growing. Often, the reality and the true image of the agricultural industry contrasts sharply with the image of production or obtaining methods created by advertising or drawings on the packaging of animal-derived products. Manipulations contained in advertisements and the ways of presenting animal-derived products, in particular dairy products, violate the aforementioned legal regulations on the obligation to provide consumers with reliable, true and complete information. Consumers, recipients of advertising messages have become accustomed to idyllic views, to cows and calves grazing happily on green, boundless meadows, sometimes tenderly stroked by farmers. These images in no way reflect the true industrial ways of producing dairy products and the living conditions of dairy cows, whose existence has been subordinated to high yield and low production costs.