The Advertising Standards Authority has not upheld a complaint against a Brooke television advert, after one viewer challenged the charity’s claim that “thousands of working donkeys die every day”.

A television advert featuring scenes of struggling donkeys carrying heavy loads included the claim that thousands of donkeys die every day as it appealed for donations.

The Brooke cited figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations for 2012 which estimate that there are 44 million donkeys in the world, 15 million of which are in less developed countries. 95 per cent of donkeys are working animals and those that are kept as pets are mostly in Europe in America.

According to the charity the average life expectancy of a working donkey is 11 to 12 years and worked out that on average at least 3,400 donkeys would die each day.

The ASA concluded that: “It was reasonable to extrapolate from that data that thousands of working donkeys died every day and therefore concluded that the claim had been substantiated.”