Danish Crown Admits to Misleading Consumers by Claiming Pork is Climate-Friendly – vegconomist

Europe’s largest pork producer, Danish Crown, has admitted that it misled consumers by claiming that “Danish pork is more climate-friendly than you think”.

The news comes after the Vegetarian Society of Denmark and the Climate Movement Association brought a case against Danish Crown for making unsubstantiated claims about the sustainability of its products. Last month, the Western High Court convicted Danish Crown of greenwashing for using the phrase “Climate-controlled pig”, but disagreed that some of the company’s other climate claims were misleading.

Convinced that the claims did constitute greenwashing, The Vegetarian Society of Denmark and the Climate Movement Association chose to appeal. However, on April 12 Danish Crown contacted the Supreme Court to admit that it had misled consumers, just a few days after the Consumer Ombudsman intervened on the side of the green organisations.

“Danish Crown acknowledges that they were behind a massive advertising campaign that made their climate-damaging products appear greener than they actually are. I hope that many companies will follow suit and learn from this so that we can have a fair market where climate-damaging products like pork are not marketed as ‘climate-friendly’,” said Frederik Roland Sandby, secretary-general of the Climate Movement Association.

“We did not comply with marketing law”

Jais Valeur, CEO of Danish Crown, previously admitted in 2021 that beef could not be climate-friendly. However, he insisted that pork production would be able to continue at its current level, a claim that was disputed by Kristine Clement of Greenpeace. She pointed out that while pork has a lower climate impact than beef, it would be much more efficient for humans to eat the crops that are currently fed to pigs.

In 2022, Danish Crown entered the plant-based market with a range of meat alternatives made from Nordic or organic vegetables.

“Danish Crown has informed the Danish Supreme Court that we are responding affirmatively to the claims made by the Climate Movement in Denmark and the Danish Vegetarian Association in the case about the use of the expressions ‘Climate-controlled pig’ and ‘Danish pig is more climate-friendly than you think’,” said Danish Crown in a statement. “Thus, Danish Crown accepts that, when we used the aforementioned statements, we did not comply with the requirements of the marketing law, and also accepts a ban on using these statements in any marketing going forward.”

However, the Vegetarian Society of Denmark notes that Danish Crown is currently still using the phrase “Climate-controlled pig” on its English-language website.