The advertising watchdog has banned an ad campaign by animal rights group Peta for misleading consumers that swine flu could be contracted by eating meat.

Peta's poster campaign stated "Meat kills" in large letters. In the background smaller text listed a range of superbugs including E.Coli, mad cow disease, swine flu and MRSA. The words "swine flu" were more prominent than the surrounding text. A line at the bottom of the ad said: "Go Vegetarian. Peta".

The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the poster misleadingly implied that swine flu could be caught be eating meat and that it might cause "undue fear" about how it could be contracted.

Peta said it did not intend to suggest that eating meat caused swine flu but wanted to highlight the role that livestock production played in the incubation, development and spread of fatal infectious diseases.

Adopting a purely vegetarian diet was one of the best ways to prevent the development and spread of deadly diseases that originated from livestock production and meat consumption and which threatened public health, the organisation added.

The ASA noted that the poster referred to a number of diseases, two of which were known to have originated from eating meat and two that did not.

"Although we understood the intention was to refer to livestock and meat production rather than just eating meat, we considered that the message was, at best, ambiguous," said the ASA.

"We considered that some readers might infer from the poster, and in particular the claim "Meat kills" in conjunction with the claim "Go vegetarian", that eating meat caused swine flu. We concluded that the poster was likely to mislead and could cause undue fear and distress to some readers."

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