Hackney Council, one of the municipalities in the Metropolitan area of London, has pledged to end advertising for dairy products and some meat on all council-owned land, becoming the first local authority leadership in the UK to plan to introduce such a restriction. The commitment was made by Zoe Garbett, Mayor of Hackney.
The move follows the launch of the Gag Big Ag campaign by anti-advertising group Adfree Cities, which calls on councils across the country to remove public adverts promoting factory-farmed meat, dairy, and fast food. The campaign argues that intensive animal agriculture depends on misleading imagery to obscure serious animal welfare and environmental problems. Hackney’s pledge follows a similar move in the Netherlands, where Haarlem, Bloemendaal, and Utrecht banned adverts for meat and fossil fuels in their public transport shelters and similar council-owned places.
A report by Social Change Lab found that 56% of people in the UK support an outright ban on factory farming, while at least 73% oppose the strict confinement of chickens, pigs, and dairy cows.
Nicola Wilks, Adfree Cities campaign coordinator, said meat and dairy adverts conceal how most UK meat and dairy is actually produced, in order to promote factory farming to consumers who might otherwise avoid it. She said to Plant Based News, “Communities across the country are blocking new factory farms, from sheds housing millions of chickens to inland salmon farms. Most people in the UK are opposed to animals being confined in sheds with barely any room to move.”
New UK restrictions on junk food advertising came into force in January 2026, but outdoor billboards were left exempt. According to data from the Animal Law Foundation, approximately 85% of farmed animals in the UK are kept in intensive conditions, including 95% of chickens, a reality corporate advertising rarely reflects.
