Tesco uses pictures of beef cattle in milk advert

A spokesman for Tesco said as soon as it spotted the mistake new pictures were sent out

Supermarket giant Tesco has been forced to scrap a national advertising campaign after it used the wrong breed of cow in one of its milk adverts.

The posters, designed to highlight a drop in the price of a four-pint bottle of milk, displayed pictures of a type of cattle used exclusively for meat.

But people with a beef have taken to the social-networking site Twitter to criticise the supermarket.

A spokesman for Tesco said the adverts were being replaced.

The mistake was first spotted by farmers, who pointed out that the cows on show were a Hereford cross cow - farmed for beef production rather than milk.

Farmer Richard Yates, who has a herd of 100 Friesian cows near Bridgnorth, told the Shropshire Star that Tesco was using cows that "would never have been milked in their lives".

"That shows how out of touch they are and what they think of dairy farmers."

Elsewhere, greengrocer Kevin Brackenbury, 50, of Chester told the BBC: "I saw the advert, and coming from a background of working in supermarkets for more than 30 years, I find things like this most amusing.

"But the price of milk for farmers is a serious issue, and I'm sure some won't take kindly to this sort of thing."

'Bovine identity crisis'‏

People also took to Twitter to comment on the error, including @homefarmhouse who said: "No surprise @metrouk reporting Tesco milk ad campaign photo beef & not dairy cows. Big supermarket no understanding of farming or countryside."

Another user, ‏@marketinglights, tweeted: "Holy Cow! How can #tesco use a wrong type of cow in their #ads? Time 2 get rid of #Shutterstock culture of marketing."

And @StephenOD tweeted: "Whoops! Milk from a Beef cow... Now that's clever! #Tesco milk promotion has a bit of a bovine identity crisis."

A Tesco spokesman said: "As soon as we spotted this mistake we organised for new pictures to be used, which customers can expect to see in their local store very soon."

He said he could not put a number on how many incorrect posters had been produced, but said the campaign had been nationwide.

Tesco did not say how much the mistake had cost the company.