Media Release

15 August 2002 Viva! Rejects ASA Ruling as Perverse The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld two complaints against the Viva! leaflet "Bangers Make Your Heart Go Pop!". The leaflet, which highlights the health dangers of eating meat was judged by the ASA to be "alarmist" and "liable to cause serious or widespread offence" (due to a picture of a dead pig). They also judged our claims about the risks associated with a meat-based diet to be "unsubstantiated". In fact, Viva! submitted a wealth of substantiating evidence to the ASA during the adjudication process and it seems that the ASA’s ruling on health risks was arrived at by ignoring information from many of the world’s leading health advisory bodies - upwards of 400 scientific references in total. Viva! considers the ASA’s rejection of evidence from (amongst others) the World Health Organisation, the British Medical Association and the American Dietetic Association - all of which agree that vegetarians suffer considerably less from all the degenerative diseases such as heart disease, strokes and cancer - to be perverse and believes it shows the ASA’s incompetence to pass judgement on questions of science. In its correspondence with Viva!, the ASA revealed a deep ignorance of diet and nutrition. It referred to the American Dietetic Association (probably the world’s most authoritative dietary body) as ‘an American dieticians’ organisation’; has omitted any reference in its finding to a scientific review written by Dr David Ryde (Britain’s lowest prescribing GP with the best medical outcomes); has omitted any reference to a paper by Prof Colin T. Campbell (organiser of the China study, the world’s largest epidemiological study into diet and health and who entirely supports Viva!’s position; refers to the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation as a Society; claims that Viva! failed to provide any scientific references when 400 or more were provided in the form of scientific reviews, a normal and accepted scientific process; and failed utterly to comprehend the link between meat and saturated fat in the diet. Tony Wardle, Associate Director of Viva! states: "The handling of this complaint has alternated between farce and pantomime, with the ASA showing itself to have neither the scientific competence nor the moral authority to pass judgement on these vital questions. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that meat eaters suffer more from all the degenerative diseases. The ADA says so, the WHO says so and the BMA says so but the ASA, who does not seem able even to grasp the fact that all meat contains saturated fat, knows better than all of them. "I believe that there are serious issues at stake here and in particular freedom of speech and the placing of commercial interests over and above science. The ASA has reached similar judgements in the past with advertisements from other organisations and despite the welter of information we have provided, it has contorted itself in order to uphold those judgements. In order to do so it has had to ignore or wilfully misinterpreted the evidence we have provided. We intend to seek arbitration."