3.00pm - By ANNE BESTON
Green Party safe food campaigner Sue Kedgley says she will appeal a decision dismissing her complaint that poultry giant Tegel mislead consumers.
Ms Kedgley complained to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board in February that Tegel advertisements were deceptive when they said their chickens were hormone-free, healthy,
natural and pure.
She said the company raised its chickens in crowded barns and, while acknowledging the company did not feed chickens hormones, she said feeding them antibiotics was tantamount to the same thing in consumer's minds.
But the authority today turned down Ms Kedgley's complaint, agreeing with Tegel that its "exploding the myths" ads, which have been running since late last year, were not misleading.
Tegel Foods spokesman Rod Hanna said the decision was a victory for commonsense.
"The sole purpose of Tegel advertising has been to ensure that consumers are better informed because research has shown that there was widespread belief our chickens were fed hormones and were raised in cages," he said.
"These were myths and we simply made a genuine effort to better inform consumers."
In a clear reference to Ms Kedgley's on-going campaign against the poultry industry's treatment of chickens, Mr Hanna said the only people advantaged by consumer confusion on matters of health and welfare "are those with their own political agenda".
Ms Kedgley said there was nothing pure and natural about feeding chickens antibiotics and 26,000 chickens raised in a barn the size of a football field did not constitute the company's claim that its chickens were "barn raised".
She said the decision was bad news for consumers and she would appeal against it to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The Green Party MP has waged something of a campaign against the poultry industry during the past year. The most recent shots she fired were over testing of a Tegel supermarket chicken, found to be contaminated with bacteria resistant to some of the most powerful antibiotics.
The independent Christchurch-based EnviroLink Laboratory tests, paid for by Ms Kedgley, found the randomly-selected chicken contained five types of bacteria resistant to antibiotics sometimes used as "last resorts" against serious infection in humans.
Tegel does not deny it feeds chickens antibiotics but says it abides by strict rules laid down by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
New Zealanders eat 69 million chickens a year and Tegel is the country's biggest producer.
