Refused anti-Foie gras ads - too shocking says railway company

Down in Belgium the animal rights activist group GAIA has gotten their anti-Foie gras campaign banned, sorta. The railway company where the ads were meant to run won't have them because they find the images "too shocking". More shocking than force feeding geese so that their livers will become grotesquely enlarged and make a nice snack? Apparently so, read more to see full images.

So, just how do you get a campaign banned? Add some S&M and stir, basically.

vrtnieuws quotes an NMBS (the railways) spokesperson, Leen Uyterhoeven who explains why the posters won't bee seen at the trainstations: 'We want strickt neutrality at our stations. We refuse all [advertising] messages that have a political or philosophical angle. We have customers of all religions, life considerations etc and for this reason we don't want to [seem to] support any position."

Credits: written by Tom Berth, art directed by Geert De Rocker. The creative directors were Katrien Bottez and Peter Ampe and the photographer was Kris Van Beek.

Campaign also spotted in the Standard and De Morgen.

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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AnonymousCoward's picture

The campaign is sorta "Okay, thats the first idea, now lets move on to the next new, big, bold and unexpected one".

I just read "A Cooks Tour" by Anthony Bourdain where he travels the world eating all kinds of weird food. He visits a duck/goose farmer who produces foie gras and is surprised to see the birds come running to get fed first when "the man with the force feeding hose" enters the room where they live.

Dabitch's picture

How bizarre - the geesee like it?

Well, if you don't move on to the next bold unexpected idea you can always go down the "get-loads-of-presss-because-it-was-banned (sorta)" route. BrandRepublic just showed this campaign off now.

The text on the ads reads "Foie gras, food for sadists".

The ads were refused by the Belgium railway company NMBS on the basis that it was a political ad

AnonymousCoward's picture

Hey I just posted an interview with a guy from Duval. Check it out.
http://gattacainc.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/12/inside_the_foie.html

AnonymousCoward's picture

(Duval Guillaume is the agency that made the ad, btw, just to give my previous comment some context)