Jamie electrocutes chickens to expose industry brutality

The TV chef, who angered animal rights campaigners in the past when he slit the throat of a conscious lamb on TV, is hoping to shock the British public once more in his latest campaign. In his graphic and hard-hitting investigation into chicken farming, Oliver makes a series of shocking revelations about intensive farming and the production of battery eggs.

In one segment, he electrocutes a chicken before draining blood from its neck to demonstrate how chickens are slaughtered. In another, he shows how male chicks, unsuitable for the egg industry, are "depleted" by being suffocated in an oxygen-starved chamber. The footage will be used to spearhead Oliver's latest crusade - a drive to improve the welfare of the 860 million chickens reared in Britain every year.

The aim of "Jamie's chicken crusade" is to persuade Britain not to produce, sell, buy or eat cheap mass-produced chicken, but to go for "morally better" freerange birds.

"If you're used to buying a non-free-range chicken, trade up £1 or so to an animal with better living conditions, like natural light and stuff to do. It's morally better for the animal and morally better for the producers," he said.

In the one-off programme, Jamie's Fowl Dinners, set to be broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday, Oliver, 32, holds a gala dinner where he shows guests the journey a chicken takes from the factory to plate. At the end of the programme, Oliver serves up a meal to his repulsed guests, who include food industry executives, organic foodies, junk food fanatics and farmers.

Oliver, who successfully campaigned to make the Government spend more on school dinners, wants British supermarkets to set a fair price for "ethically reared" chickens and eggs. "They are being pushed and pushed and are at the limit. One farmer is earning 2p a bird so has to kill 50 animals to make a quid. Where can they go from there?"

The footage follows the chef 's attack on Britain's big four supermarkets for failing to send representatives to the filming of the dinner, including Sainsbury's, with whom he has a £1.2million-a-year contract.

Insiders say he was "furious and embarrassed" when Sainsbury's - which has employed Oliver to front advertising campaigns and act as a consultant for more than seven years - failed to send a representative to the studio for the event.

Only two supermarkets, Waitrose and the Co-Op, sent representatives to the programme-part of Channel 4's Big Food Fight season. In the programme, Oliver emphasises his anger by showing a table with four empty seats representing the missing guests from Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's.

Sainsbury's defended its actions, pointing out that a manager was interviewed for the programme.