Tesco hits a new low with arrival of the £1.99 chicken

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.

Britain's biggest supermarket chain said the price of a "standard" bird would be cut by 60 per cent until Sunday to help families on tight budgets, adding that it had doubled its order for higher-welfare chicken.

The animal welfare group, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), said the arrival of a £1.99 bird was "depressing", as it followed weeks of publicity and debate about the welfare of broiler chickens, arising from a Channel 4 series and campaign by the chef High Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Dr Lesley Lambert, the CIWF'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. However, Tesco, which said that a family of four would now be able to eat a roast dinner for 99p each, claimed that it wanted to improve animal welfare while helping shoppers squeezed by "mortgage worries, energy price rises and inflation". Jonathan Church, a company spokesman, said: "We have been working hard for a while to increase the amount of higher-welfare chicken we sell and the recent debate in the media about chickens has helped raise awareness of the choice available.

"But our investment in premium chicken should not be seen as a move away from providing more affordable options. No one should feel guilty for buying a chicken just because it is good value. The only reduction we make is in the price, not the welfare."