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Tesco has asked TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to shell out nearly £90,000 to take a chicken campaign to the grocer's shareholders at its next AGM.

The chef is campaigning for new minimum welfare standards for poultry - including lower stocking densities and more environmental stimuli for the birds - and submitted a resolution to Tesco a few weeks ago to put before shareholders at the company's annual general meeting (AGM).

But Tesco is demanding £86,888 from Fearnley-Whittingstall to print and post the papers out to all 269,000 Tesco shareholders ahead of the meeting on June 27th.

Britain's biggest retailer wants the cash by Wednesday June 11th, leaving the chef just two days to raise the money.

In a statement on his website, Fearnley-Whittingstall said: "Now Tesco have told me that they will only take our resolution to the AGM if I meet the cost of distributing the relevant papers to their shareholders.

"They are entitled to waive this fee, and we have requested that they do so, in the interest of shareholder democracy, but they have declined."

Fearnley-Whittingstall plans to cover the cost with £30,000 of his own money and raise the rest through donations and an auction.

Prizes at the auction, which is being conducted online, include meals cooked by the chef, a fishing trip and signed copies of his latest book.

TV chefs have been clashing with supermarkets on welfare standards for animals as public interest in the environment grows.

Jamie Oliver had to apologise to his employer Sainsbury's earlier this year after criticising the company's involvement with battery-bred chickens.