Farmer Says There’s “Nothing False” In Controversial Vegan-Themed Tesco Ad

While a new advert from Tesco, during which a young girl tells her father she doesn’t want to eat animals anymore, has been criticized by farmers — one has stated publicly that there’s “nothing false” about it.

During an interview on popular television show This Morning, presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby were joined by vegan campaigner Lucy Watson and farmer Abi Reader to discuss the controversy.

Reader stated that, while she believed that “the wording in the advert was totally unnecessary,” the advert contained “nothing false” with respect to her industry.

Watson went on to accuse the adverts made by the meat and dairy industries of being “quite false and misleading.”

The NFU Vs Tesco

The National Farmers Union (NFU) has accused Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain in the UK, of demonizing the meat industry through the advert, which aims to promote the new Plant Chef range.

The NFU has written a letter to Tesco to express “significant concerns with the language used within the advert and how it has caused significant distress for British farmers.”

Children Making Vegan Choices

Watson labelled the advert as a “realistic scenario that is probably happening all over the world all the time” and also said that “a lot of children don’t actually know they’re eating animals.”

Watson and Reader shared during the This Morning segment that they had both been the little girl in the advert, and had questioned eating animals at a young age. Although this questioning prompted Watson to embrace veganism, Reader went on to work in the meat industry.

Do you think the farmers are right to be upset? Let us know in the comments below!