Six Denbighshire hotels have come out publicly to support the campaign, which calls for a boycott of cheap, mass-produced supermarket chickens.

Campaign founder Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall says a staggering 95 per cent of the chicken eaten in the UK is intensively farmed.

Farmers are under pressure to produce poultry as quickly and cheaply as possible – which means birds live short lives, in cramped conditions, without ever seeing natural daylight.

They commonly develop severe injuries associated with unnatural fast weight gain and restricted movement.

And according to Chicken Out the time has come to boycott cheap supermarket chicken and choose free range or RSPCA-approved alternatives.

The campaign has stirred up controversy with some chicken producers claiming that higher welfare meat is an option only for the well-off, with an organic free range bird costing between £12 and £15.

Screened on Channel Four last week, the programme showed the stark contrast between the rearing of free range and broiler birds, routinely slaughtered after just 35 days.

"How many people know about the life your fresh supermarket chickens lead before they reach your table?," asked Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall.

"That their short, intensively farmed indoor existence is managed like a factory production line, to ensure the big retailers can sell them to you for as little as two pound a bird?

"Is that all the life an animal, born and raised to feed us, is worth?"

Now six Denbighshire hotels - the Chainbridge Hotel, Bryn Howel, Wild Pheasant, Bodidris Hall, Anchor Hotel and Castle Hotel – have taken out newspaper adverts backing the Chicken Out campaign.

Hotel chain owner Stephanie Booth said: "Animal welfare has always been a high priority of mine.

"And I insisted on only using the best local free range produce in all our hotels from the very outset."

"We're obviously delighted to hear of the campaign, support it fully and wish him well," she added.

Farm shops in the county are also supporting the campaign.

Gareth Jones, farm manager at the organic Rhug Estate, Corwen, said: "There has been an increase in the sales of our chickens after the recent television programmes highlighting the conditions that intensively reared poultry are kept."

Hugh Williams, of Rhesgoed farmshop in Llanbedr DC, said: "It's all free range here, and thanks to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver showing the appaling conditions in which chickens are fattened and eggs produced for the mass market.

"The chickens we sell in our outlets are free range and produced by a local farmer in Llanbedr DC."

Wrexham-based Grampian Country Food, which supplies a wide range of products, including chicken, to Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Co-op and Somerfield, produce 5,600 tonnes of whole/portion chickens and 470 tonnes of cooked chicken a week.

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