Perdue Organic Chickens

The National Advertising Division (aka The National Advertising Division (NAD) is the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.) has advised that chicken producer Perdue discontinue or modify ads running on TV and YouTube for its Harvestland Organic brand that NAD says lead consumers to (falsely) believe all Perdue chickens are raised using organic farming methods when in fact this is unique to just two Perdue lines of chickens.

NAD found ads like the YouTube video above making the implied claim that all Perdue chickens are USDA-certified organic and thus see plenty of the outside, are 100 percent vegetarian-fed and are raised without the use of antibiotics. A Perdue customer representative confirmed to TINA.org that the company does have certain lines of organic chickens, Harvestland Organic and Coleman.

However, the ad only momentarily flashes the Harvestland Organic logo and gives no auditory indication that the organic claims apply only to this specific line. Additionally, NAD found that the voiceover “Perdue, raising more organic chickens than anyone in America” would likely lead viewers of the ad to interpret this organic claim as applicable to all of Perdue’s offerings.

Perdue responded to NAD’s inquiry by submitting a consumer perception survey which, it argued, proved that viewers would interpret the organic claims to be narrowly applied to Harvestland Organic. However, upon reviewing the survey, NAD found just the opposite to be true: that respondents were more likely to broadly apply the claims made in the ad to the brand as a whole.

Perdue plans to appeal NAD’s findings to the National Advertising Review Board.

Find more of our coverage on organic here.