The complaint said Greenpeace was blaming the dairy industry for all deterioration in water quality and was misleading the public.
DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said the industry could not stand by and let an activist group pitch messages to the public any way it wanted to.
While the appeal risked legitimising the Greenpeace view of the dairy industry in the eyes of the public, DairyNZ “needed to do what was right”.
Its appeal would take issue with further misleading claims made by Greenpeace in its defence.
DairyNZ was also stung by an ASA comment the industry-good body should devote resources to improving the environment rather than complaining about Greenpeace.
Over the past five years dairy farmers had spent more than $1 billion fencing waterways, wetland restoration and effluent management systems.
None of that work and expense was acknowledged by Greenpeace in its advertisement or in its defence to the ASA, Mackle said.
The ASA did not uphold complaints by DairyNZ and 11 others that the Greenpeace advertisement was misleading and breached advertising ethics.
Complainants said they found the television commercial misleading because it identified the dairy industry as being responsible for pollution of NZ’s rivers.
Some said it put 100% of the blame on the dairy industry and demonised it.
In response, Greenpeace said the advertisement was not misleading or in breach of the advertising code of ethics because the impact of intensive dairying on water quality was widely documented.
Greenpeace was an environmental advocacy organisation and was taking part in the ongoing national debate about the management and pollution of water resources.
The ASA agreed Greenpeace was entitled to the rule 11 defence, that of advocacy advertising, because its identity and position was well known.
Turning to whether the commercial contained statements that were misleading or deceptive, the ASA said the general statements about the pollution of NZ rivers would not come as a surprise to most New Zealanders.
It said the advertisement did not allege the dairy industry alone was responsible for the pollution of rivers.
While it might have been offensive to the complainants, the advertisement did not meet the threshold to cause serious or widespread offence.
The DairyNZ complaint said the river shown in the Greenpeace advertisement contained beef and sheep farming and forestry operations upstream.
“Therefore to lay the blame solely on dairying is, at best, inaccurate.”
The claim that people used to be able to drink water from NZ rivers and now couldn’t because of dairying was misleading and potentially a public health issue.
The drinking water standard required E. coli levels under one part per 100ml and that would not be met by streams and rivers, even in national parks.
“Our lowland streams and rivers would have never met the drinking water standard,” DairyNZ said.
It attached a statement from Environmental Science and Research (ESR) to that effect.
ESR said all surface waters were considered unsafe sources of drinking water without treatment and the many faecal sources included cattle, sheep, ducks, dogs, wild animals and naturally occurring bacteria in soils.
Other complainants said one of the streams shown in the advertisement was in flood, that some of the most polluted rivers were in urban areas and efforts and expenditure by dairy farmers to improve dairy effluent management and improve waterways were not mentioned.
“Greenpeace is asking for donations to clean up our waterways but as far as we know it doesn’t do anything in NZ to clean up waterways,” one submission said.
Greenpeace put before the ASA a number of reports it said were scientific evidence pointing to nitrate and pathogen pollution of the country's waterways as a result of industrial dairying.
It also denied its advertisement solely blamed dairying for polluted rivers and that no actual rivers were named, though both were in Waikato.
“The statement that dairying is polluting our rivers and the depiction of a river in the dairy-intensive Waikato region that is partially or substantially polluted by dairy farming is a fair and reasonable communication,” Greenpeace said.
DairyNZ said it made a brief complaint, following the ASA guidelines, and that Greenpeace responded with a long defence citing many researchers and sources.
For the appeal, DairyNZ would cover all the environmental good work done by dairy farmers and the improvements in water quality that followed.
