A Morrisons advert featuring a boy feeding a dog Christmas pudding has been cleared after drawing 234 complaints that it was a potentially lethal practice.
The television advert showed a boy looking disdainfully at a plate of pudding and passing it to a younger boy, who gave it to a dog sitting beside him.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said vets, veterinary nurses and others who worked with dogs were among those who complained that the advert was irresponsible and harmful because they understood that Christmas pudding contained ingredients that were potentially lethal to dogs.
Bradford-based Morrisons said the advert was intended to light-heartedly reflect the fact that not everyone liked Christmas pudding, adding that it would “never condone or encourage anyone to feed Christmas pudding, or any other non-standard canine diet food, to dogs”.
Rejecting the complaints, the ASA said it was unlikely that viewers, including children, would interpret the advert to mean that dogs liked Christmas pudding.
It said: “We concluded the ad was not irresponsible and did not condone or encourage viewers to feed Christmas pudding to dogs."
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