Finger lickin' chicken truth

Chicken Run fans in the West End will be left choking on their nuggets by an unexpected appetiser to the hit movie - an advertisement depicting the hellish life of a battery bird. The stark commercial, titled "Chicken Can't Run", which aims to convert film goers to vegetarianism, will be screened minutes before the plasticine caper at the UCI Cinema in Leicester Square.

Viva!, the vegetarian charity behind the 20-second ad, believes it chimes with the animation's spoof on The Great Escape where battery chickens plot to escape a cruel farm and their dreaded fate as chicken pies.

"We hope it will make audiences realise that an innocent nugget is not so innocent after all, but is about a life that's suffered terribly. That real chickens have a much worse time than the cartoon characters and do die," said director Juliet Gellately, who deems Chicken Run "excellent". "We hope it will nudge people into asking, Do they suffer? Do they feel pain?"

The £25,000 advert is currently being filmed on a real-life battery farm in Manchester by local firm Cheetham Bell. "It starts with the close-up of a distressed eye and some clucking. Then the camera slowly pans out to reveal the chicken's face, and as the music gets more dramatic, reveals that it is caged and can't spread its wings or move," she said.

The charity, which is supported by ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, ran a highly successful "Who loves you Babe?" drive to coincide with the piglet epic, distributing leaflets outside cinemas across the country. It now predicts an "inevitable" 15 per cent slump in chicken sales.

"There was no recovery from a 10 per cent dip in pork sales months after Babe," said Ms Gellately. "Most people don't want to be cruel to animals. A lot are on the verge of giving up meat and sometimes it just takes a little thing like a film to tip the balance. Once they give up one meat, they start to reflect on the issue and usually give up others. The British Poultry and Meat Federation are very worried."

But the Federation retorted by accusing the charity of exploitation. A spokesman said: "If it is true, it would be a cynical hijacking of people's enjoyment on a fun day out at the movies."

Ms Gellately defended the charity's stance, claiming it is providing much-wanted information. "Our ad's not about an abattoir bloodbath. The film's much more frightening, especially the scenes with chickens flailing about in the huge churning machinery," she said. "When we were handing out Go Veggie leaflets outside a cinema in Brighton, people were snatching them out of our hands."

She argued that Britain has a "sorry" battery farming record. "Almost 98 per cent of chickens killed for their meat are factory farmed, with up to 50,000 in a shed standing in their own filth. Their resulting abnormal growth causes six-week-old birds to die of heart disease or collapse under their own weight," she said.

The advertisement will be shown during the last two weeks of July.