Tesco slashed the price of a whole chicken to £1.99 yesterday, in a move that critics warned would heap financial pressure on the poultry industry and make it harder to the improve welfare of factory-farmed animals.
Dr Lesley Lambert, Compassion in World Farming's director of research and education, said: "£1.99 doesn't reflect the real price of producing a chicken. At the moment, farmers make only 2p per chicken, so this will push them to the limit."
She said that Tesco should be cutting the price of its higher-welfare chicken rather than its bottom-of-the-range birds.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said yesterday: "I'm very surprised [at Tesco] because everybody is selling out of free-range chicken. To launch a £1.99 chicken is in direct contradiction to a statement [the chief executive] Sir Terry Leahy made last summer when he said he didn't want to get into a food price war on chicken."
06 February 2008
Tesco Cuts "Standard" Chicken Prices
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