Mary Honeyball MEP has rightly been having a go at Ryanair about a charity calendar the airline has been selling that contains air hostesses in various states of undress in their aircraft. You can read Mary’s posts about that case and make up your mind about it; frankly nothing Ryanair and Micheal O’Leary do surprises me in the slightest any more. Worst of all is that he attacks the European Commission all the time, but were it not for the Commission liberalising Europe’s airline market his damned company wouldn’t exist… But anyway I digress.
DG Heath & Consumer Protection have just launched a new website called Farmland The Game that aims to explain to kids how farm animals should be cared for. OK as an idea I suppose. Yet you take a look at the game and you see that it’s technologically complicated and hence must have cost an absolute fortune to produce (€100K at least I would imagine)… And then you start to play the game and this scantily clad farm girl – Bérenice (she would have to have a French name, given the French get 20% of CAP money…) – accompanies you throughout. She’s pictured in the screenshot here. Seriously do we really need to have a scantily clad farm girl to present a website intended for kids that’s meant to deal with animal safety issues?
Hi Jon,
Thank you for highlighting this website. It really is shocking that the Commission – and the DG Health no less – finds it acceptable to portray an image of an unhealthily thin and provocatively dressed young girl on a website aimed at children.
I have taken up the issue with some urgency. Yesterday I wrote a priority written question to the Commission asking them what were they thinking when they created the site, how much the site cost to create, and whether they see the harm in promoting this image to children. I have also raised the issue with my colleagues in the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee. We are currently looking at other actions we could take.
I’ll keep you posted here when I have any new developments.
Thanks again,
Mary
Thanks for the comment, sorry it has taken me a while to approve it! I look forward to hearing more about your investigations.
Actually Mary Honeyball is not so right about Ryanair… is just me, or using female nakedness on advertising is as old as I can remmember (I’m 31)? I turn on the TV and all I see is that (i live in Portugal, don’t believe the situation is much different on the rest of the continent).. Of course that doesn’t make it ok, but clearly makes you wonder why a few politicians chose to point out a particular company, instead of condemning the general practise?
But if all this is above all a matter of taste, it’s quite different when we’re talking about advertising paid by public funds.. this is far more serious.
And by the way, so much money spent, but not enough to translate it to all official languages?
Actually Mary Honeyball is not so right about Ryanair… is just me, or using female nakedness on advertising is as old as I can remmember (I’m 31)? I turn on the TV and all I see is that (i live in Portugal, don’t believe the situation is much different on the rest of the continent).. Of course that doesn’t make it ok, but clearly makes you wonder why a few politicians chose to point out a particular company, instead of condemning the general practise?
But if all this is above all a matter of taste, it’s quite different when we’re talking about advertising paid by public funds.. this is far more serious.
And by the way, so much money spent, but not enough to translate it to all official languages?
Dear Jon,
I share your opinion of the Farmland website, and the day after it was launched I took to emailing DG Health (no reply), MEP’s (a few of the Swedish ones claimed to be very upset but I don’t know what they actually did about it, though I hope they’re still on it), EWL as well as the political parties in Sweden.
My latest action on the case so far was contacting Mr Tod at DG Health, who replied quickly, though only to say that DH Health would be replying to me once they had gathered all the necessary information to give me the full picture.
That was almost two weeks ago now.
Can’t really imagine what the full picture would be, but I am very much looking forward to their email!
Stay on the case please!
Kind regards,
Matilda
Dear all,
It took a while but now our delegation formally protested. I also saw the answer that Matilda got on her letter to the commission. Unfortunately it was very weak, and it did not seem like they were considering undoing anything. So more protests seem to be needed
All the best,
Ã…sa