Three weeks ago Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a competition to inspire the creative side of followers of his famous Chicken Out! campaign, and last week the panel of judges which included Hugh himself, and representatives from Compassion in World Farming chose their winner.

Hugh has been urging Tesco to live up to their claims about welfare issues regarding their standard chicken, trying methods such as telephone conversations, face to face interviews and even becoming a shareholder to get the multi-million pound supermarket chain to take his campaign seriously. Having hit many barriers along the way, Hugh turned to his fellow chicken welfare supporters to show that customers as well as campaigners care about chicken welfare and threw down the gauntlett to design a new label that accurately depicts the environment these chickens are raised in.

The winning design from Debbie Cripps shows an image of a broiler house; hundreds of chickens packed into a dark shed with barely room to move, the title ‘Intensively Reared Chicken’ splashed across the top of the label, and the text beneath the image giving a more accurate description of where the chickens are raised.  Hugh said his reason for choosing this design is because of its ‘transparency and fairness’, and went on to say “This design is a stark contrast from the outdoor image and misleading wording that currently appears on the Tesco standard chicken label.”

The new label design has been presented to Tesco with the aim that they will introduce this clearer, more accurate description of the product on sale. Only time will tell whether they will take on board the feedback from customers and campaigners, or Chicken Out!?