The 2016 edition (above) features SBS news presenter Lee Lin Chin launching “Operation Boomerang” to bring Aussies home in time for an Australia Day Barbecue… with lamb at the top of the menu, of course.
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Australia Day is an annual national holiday held on January 26, the anniversary of the arrival of British settlers in the country on 1788.
The commercial, by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), was released on Saturday and has since gone viral.
The vegan backlash to the ad is aimed at a scene when “lambassador” Sam Kekovich’s team of commandos busts down the door of an Australian man living in the U.S.
“C’mon mate, in a few hours you’ll be eating lamb on the beach”, the agent says.
Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau has already received 250 complaints about the ad, a lot of them from vegans who have called the ad discriminatory, according to the BBC.
The operative is then told to abort the mission and is seen burning the vegan’s coffee table with a flamethrower.
The man replies: “But I’m a vegan now”.
‘The violence is the main issue people are complaining about, ‘ said a spokeswoman for the ASB.
Extracts of the complaints will be published on the ASB website after its next board meeting in about two weeks’ time, a spokesperson said.
At the start of this delightful and amusing Australia Day ad from Meat & Livestock Australia, famous newsreader Lee Lin Chin recalls a freezing winter in Warsaw in 1996 when she couldn’t even grill a lamb chop. Australians ate more than 90 kg, or nearly 200 lbs, of meat per person in 2014, beating the USA for meat-eating capital of the world.
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LAMB fans are loving the latest Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) blockbuster – but this year’s cheeky installment has been grilled for depicting violence against vegans.
