The peak body for the factory-farmed salmon industry, Salmon Tasmania, has announced it will appeal the regulator’s decision to remove one of its latest TV ads for being misleading. The ad featured misleading images purporting to show footage of a clean seafloor beneath factory fish farms, in an attempt to convince viewers that this is what industrial salmon farming looks like.
“The factory fish farm companies set out to mislead viewers. It is well documented that huge bacterial mats, worms, gas bubbles and dead zones are what is actually under a factory fish farm, not a clean sea floor,” said Alistair Allan, Antarctic and Marine Campaigner at Bob Brown Foundation.
“This ad was rightly pulled for violating the advertising regulator’s code of ethics. It is yet another example of a thrashing industry desperate to hide the truth about its polluting operations. It’s too late; the cat is out of the bag and the Australian public knows that this industry is an environmental disaster. The toxic salmon farm companies need to realise that after images of fish being suffocated to death in bins, rotting salmon washing up on local beaches, and with algae covering once pristine bays, no amount of misleading advertising is going to fix their PR crisis,” said Alistair Allan.
Ad Standards ruling:
