Supermarkets are encouraging customers to enter their stores by offering more special offers featuring chicken with the lowest living standards, according to animal welfare campaign group Wakker Dier.

Last year, Dutch supermarkets offered shoppers 2,836 bargain deals involving chicken. Of these, 1,937 were for meat from fast-growing hens which live in cramped conditions. This is a rise of 180 on 2017 and up 56% on 2015, the organisation said.

Meat from extremely fast-growing chickens known as ‘plofkip’ – which is fed to grow two kilos in six weeks – has been phased out from fresh meat departments in Dutch supermarkets.

The current cheapest chicken comes from hens which are raised slightly more slowly than ‘plofkip’ and which are kept with a maximum of 17 per square metre of barn.

Nevertheless, Wakker Dier says it wants supermarkets to stop selling meat without at least a one star ‘better life’ certificate.

‘It is worrying that supermarkets still see chicken as a means to lure in customers, rather than an animal,’  Anne Hilhorst from the Wakker Dier group, said.