Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Untamed Cat Food Ltd
Where: United Kingdom
When: 15 April 2026
Law stated as at: 11 May 2026
What happened
The ASA has upheld a complaint against Untamed Cat Food‘s ad featured in a post on the brand’s social media account.
The ad featured a presenter walking through a supermarket aisle, with the headline claim: “The worst pet food you will find in the supermarket.” The presenter held up three competitor cat food products, with packaging partially blurred, and made a series of claims about their meat content, including that labelling terms such as “rich in”, “with” and “flavour” indicated low-percentage or no meat content (stating that “rich in” means “a minimum of 14% meat in the product” and “with” means “a minimum of 4% meat in the product”). The ad stated that a cat is “an obligate carnivore meaning their bodies require nutrients that are only found in animal proteins”. Referring to other cat food brands, the presenter stated that they “don’t even come close to the 100% whole meat nutrition that your cat needs.”
Further, the presenter endorsed Untamed as “the best option out there”, citing its “100% human grade meat” with none of the “fillers or cereals” that other brands use to “make up for a lack of meat”.
The ASA investigated whether the following claims were misleading:
‘The worst pet food you will find in the supermarket’
Under the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing (CAP Code), comparisons with identifiable competitors must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative features.
Untamed argued that blurred packaging prevented identification of specific products or brands and that it intended to illustrate industry-wide practices rather than to target individual products. Untamed maintained that the comparison was objective because the claim rested on meat content data of the applicable cat foods, with the “worst” being those that satisfied only the minimum standards in that respect.
The ASA, however, found that consumers were likely to be able to identify the specific blurred brands featured by the colours, text, illustrations and designs, meaning that the ad made a comparison with identifiable competitors. Since the claim “the worst pet food you will find in the supermarket” was a comparative claim, consumers would expect it to be supported by objective data. The ASA considered that the ad overall went beyond a meat content claim and amounted to a broad quality judgement across supermarket cat food generally. To support such a claim, Untamed would need to demonstrate that the relevant products had been assessed against appropriate and relevant criteria and found to perform worst against those criteria. However, the ASA had not seen evidence that those products were objectively the “worst” cat foods available in supermarkets, or that minimum meat content alone justified such a broad quality judgement. The claim was therefore misleading.
Claims about competitors’ meat percentages
Untamed pointed to the European Pet Food Industry Association’s labelling thresholds, which set out the minimum percentage of a specific named ingredient that a product must contain before it can use phrases like “rich in chicken” or “with salmon” on its packaging. A product can use such labelling only if it contains at least the required percentage of the specific named ingredient – not the minimum percentage of combined meats or fish.
While the specific named meats were visible on the packaging in the ad, the more prominent voice-over and the on-screen text referred simply to “meat” without specifying which type. The ASA therefore found that consumers would interpret the claims “there’s a minimum of 14% meat in the product” and “there’s a minimum of 4% meat in the product” as referring to the total amount of meat or fish content in a product, rather than the percentage of a single named ingredient. In reality, those percentages only referred to the named ingredient, not the total meat content. Cat food typically exceeds the percentage of the named ingredient, because manufacturers also add other types of meat and animal products. This meant that the ad gave a misleading impression of how little total meat competitor products contained.
The ad also contained a claim that “if you see the word ‘flavour’ that means there doesn’t have to be any of this ingredient in the product whatsoever”, appearing alongside a product that stated “flavoured with”, which required a certain percentage of the named ingredient. Untamed accepted that the presenter incorrectly applied the “flavour” labelling claim to a product labelled “flavoured with”.
‘Don’t even come close to the 100% whole meat nutrition your cat needs’
The ASA considered that consumers were likely to understand from the ad that cats need a diet that is 100% whole meat; Untamed’s products provide exactly that; and the competitor brands shown previously in the ad were falling short of that standard. The ASA had not seen evidence to substantiate these claims and therefore concluded that they were misleading.
Untamed acknowledged in its response that a cat’s diet does not need to consist entirely of meat to be nutritionally adequate. The company said that the “100% human grade meat” and “100% fresh, real meat” claims were intended to describe the quality of its ingredients not that the entire product was made of whole meat. It also pointed out that its products contain around 60% named meat or fish, which is high compared to competitors. However, like most wet cat foods, broth made up a significant proportion of the recipes. Although broth contains some meat derivatives, the ASA took the view that most people would not consider it “whole meat”.
No evidence was provided to show that cats required a specific percentage of meat for their diet to be nutritionally adequate and that competitor products “don’t even come close” to meeting cats’ nutritional needs. The ASA found that the ad therefore exaggerated the difference in meat content between Untamed and other brands.
Why this matters
This ruling highlights for food and pet product brands that use comparative advertising to target competitors. Blurring competitor packaging does not guarantee anonymity, and the ASA will assess whether consumers can still identify the brands in question. Nutritional claims, even those intended to speak to ingredient quality rather than overall composition, must be robustly substantiated. Where an ad draws comparisons against the wider market, marketers should hold comprehensive evidence to support those claims.
Lilian Bates, trainee solicitor with Osborne Clarke, contributed to this article.
