The British Horse Society has been campaigning against ragwort for several years. They have been distributing dubious information via their websites and via their Press Releases. Often promoting their Ragwort Awareness Week activities.

This led to a series of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority who regulate advertisements in the UK.

A joint leaflet was produced with Warwickshire Council which contained a falsehood about the law contained the logos of both organisations. The Authority contacted the council and told them to stop using the leaflet as it was inaccurate.

At the time of the writing of this page a similar false claim about the law on ragwort was still present on one of their websites despite the British Horse Society having been very publicly notified of it and similar falsehoods were repeated on their misleading ragwort toolkit

The British Horse Society has for many years used the highly suspect figure of 6,500 horse deaths a year. This comes from very questionable use of statistics. See Ragwort horse deaths for an analysis and for more realistic data. This was repeated by companies selling ragwort related products. The companies then had to change their advertising because the figure was unjustifiable. It is questionable whether a Registered Charity like the British Horse Society should be acting in this manner.