The new Hackney mayor has pledged to ban meat and dairy advertising on council owned sites in the borough. When this policy is adopted, it will make Hackney the first council in the UK to do so - and if the trend unfolds here as it has in The Netherlands, Hackney won’t be the last. Here we take a closer look at meat and dairy advertising as a barrier to progress, and why Hackney is taking a stand against it.
In the video above, Councillor Alastair Binnie-Lubbock talks about the Hackney mayor's pledge to ban meat and dairy advertising in the borough. Alastair also explains how councils have powers to resist corporate advertising billboards full stop - not just to limit the content they display.
Why end meat advertising?
Deep down, most of us sense that there is something very wrong with how animals are farmed in the UK, and how meat and other animal based foods are produced. But there’s a very powerful influence machine that keeps us from looking at the facts, and enables this industry to continue harming animals, nature and our health with little scrutiny. Advertising plays a major role not just in persuading us to buy a particular product, but in legitimising entire brands and industries which are causing harm, through a range of sophisticated tactics. Advertising normalises behaviours which create profit for the brands and industries promoting them, including excessive consumption of meat.
McDonald’s spends more than any other company on outdoor advertising in the UK (over £86million a year), with KFC also being one of the top spenders. The result is that we get a constant drip feed of adverts for burgers and fried chicken as we move through our towns and cities, with never any mention of how that food was produced. We’re kept in the dark, and Big Ag keeps profiting from a system driving pollution, cruelty and intensification.
Ad bans work
This advertising is a barrier to the food system that we need to be shifting towards, and which councils want to support: localised, sustainable, healthier, fairer. So it makes little sense for councils to be enabling Big Ag by allowing them to advertise. Councils have the power to say no to this advertising, and that’s what Hackney is doing.
Advertising restrictions are not a new idea - and they work. Banning tobacco advertising reduced smoking and saved lives. Dozens of councils around the UK have now banned advertising for unhealthy food, and over twenty have now introduced policies restricting advertising for high carbon products such as SUVs and airlines. Last month, Bristol became the first city to restrict adverts promoting ultra-fast fashion.
Amsterdam followed the nearby city of Haarlem in banning all advertising for meat in public spaces, and other municipalities in the Netherlands have followed suit. As councils in the UK become more confident - particularly given the latest evidence that advertising restrictions are not affecting council income - we’re likely to see more following in Hackney’s footsteps too.