NZ sperm quality ad complaint upheld

Photo / Wikimedia Commons

The Advertising Standards Authority has weighed in on a debate over the quality and quantity of New Zealand men's sperm.

An advertisement for Menevit male fertility treatment featured on a Family Health Diary informercial drew a complaint from one television viewer, who took exception to a claim that the quality of New Zealand men's sperm had halved.

The complainant said the statement was deliberately misleading, because no time frame for the change in quality was given and no reliable surveys could produce such a finding.

"Advertisers should not be permitted to make such unsubstantiated and impossible claims," the complainant said.

The advertiser, Bayer, told the authority the statement was supported by a peer-reviewed trial in which the semen of 975 New Zealand men was tested by two highly-respected fertility experts over a 20-year period.

The advertisement had been reviewed and approved by the Commercial Approvals Bureau prior to being screened on television.

The authority's complaints board found that while the study cited by Bayer supported a decline in the quantity of men's sperm, the quality was a different issue. The advertisement's claim that "the sperm quality of New Zealand men has halved" was therefore unsupported.

The board said viewers likely to be interested in the product were probably trying to conceive children, and were therefore part of a "narrow" audience with a level of vulnerability. This necessitated a high standard of social responsibility in advertising the product.

The majority of the board agreed that the advertisement contained a misleading claim and therefore breached the therapeutic products advertising code. They also found it did not meet the high standard of social responsibility set out in the code.

A minority of the board said that although the advertisement simplified the research findings, it still communicated that a study had been undertaken and there had been a change in men's reproductive health.

The complaint was upheld in accordance with the majority view.

- NZPA