In April 2026, a campaign called Project Slingshot placed more than 750 advertisements across 206 London Underground stations, with a further 2,200 inside carriages, for a two-month run. Backed by a US philanthropist and co-founded by Matthew Glover, who also founded Veganuary, it features Diane Morgan, Dr Amir Khan, Jen Brister and others, each dismissing the meat industry’s claim that CO2 gassing of pigs constitutes “humane slaughter”. The tagline is “I don’t buy it”.
What makes it different from previous animal welfare campaigns is the targeting. The ads are not aimed at committed vegans, they are placed where millions of ordinary commuters cannot avoid them on the morning journey into work, framed not as a lifestyle argument but as a consumer deception story: the industry has hidden something from you, and here it is.
A survey commissioned by the campaign found that 81% of Britons considered CO2 gassing of pigs unacceptable once told about it. That is the territory the campaign is occupying: not veganism, but informed consent. It is a harder argument for the industry to dismiss.
The organisation describes itself explicitly as a “narrative pressure engine” modelled on anti-tobacco and anti-drink-driving campaigns, designed to make it socially, politically and culturally impossible to keep defending industrial farming. Glover has said there will be more campaigns, each one louder and harder to ignore than the last. The food industry should read that description carefully.
The playbook has changed
Project Slingshot did not emerge from nowhere. The food industry spent three years lobbying, delaying and negotiating its way to a workable version of the HFSS advertising restrictions that came into force on 5 January 2026. The brand advertising exemption was secured. The outdoor loophole survived. The settlement, hard-fought as it was, felt like a line drawn.
But there is no line, there is only a pause. Four months on, Bite Back 2030 is already pressing for the outdoor gap to be closed. The Obesity Health Alliance has described the industry’s success in winning the brand exemption as a political capitulation. Adfree Cities is now working with local councils directly. In the May 2026 local elections, four London councils including Islington explicitly committed to banning street advertising of HFSS products on council-controlled sites. Over 70 candidates signed an Adfree Cities pledge on the same issue.
Food companies might shrug this off as a fringe position working its way in from the outside, but it is a mainstream position working its way down from the top.
The international context reinforces that. On 1 May 2026, Amsterdam became the first capital city in the world to ban public advertising for meat products outright, covering beef, pork, chicken and fish across billboards, tram stops and metro stations. Campaigners and city councillors there have described it explicitly as a “tobacco moment” for meat. Seven other Dutch cities are now developing similar policies. Each one normalises the next.
The framing now being used across these campaigns – in Amsterdam, on the London Underground and in the local election manifestos of British councillors – follows the same logic. Meat advertising, like tobacco advertising before it, is held to create a false social norm, one that obscures harm and maintains consumption through cultural saturation rather than informed choice. That argument, once accepted as the terms of the debate, is very difficult for the industry to contest on commercial or regulatory grounds alone.
The AHDB’s ‘Let’s Eat Balanced’ campaign drew complaints to the ASA from Adfree Cities and others who argued it misled consumers. The complaint was largely not upheld, but the willingness to mount legal challenges against straightforward promotional advertising marks a shift in the operating environment that the food industry has not yet fully absorbed.
Compliance is not belief
The industry’s instinct has been to fight individual regulatory battles and win concessions, while leaving the broader narrative largely uncontested. That approach worked well enough when the pressure came through formal channels. It is less suited to a situation where the pressure comes through celebrity-fronted Underground advertising campaigns funded by US philanthropy, local election pledges, select committee evidence sessions and the steady accumulation of media coverage linking meat to cancer, climate change and animal suffering, all at once.
The HFSS settlement bought time. Project Slingshot has shown what well-resourced, professionally designed, emotionally targeted campaigns against the meat industry now look like in the UK’s own public spaces.
The industry has spent years winning regulatory arguments. It has not spent that time building belief. The task now is to make the case – about nutrition, about farming, about rural livelihoods, about consumer choice – with the same consistency and confidence that its opponents are now bringing to theirs. That window is narrowing.
Mike Coppen-Gardner is founder and chief executive at WeAreSPQR
No comments yet