Jimmy Doherty’s mission to get Tesco to switch to higher-welfare sourcing on key poultry and meat lines has had its first commercial success - Tesco’s new free-range chicken kiev is among the top 25% selling breaded poultry products in stores where it’s sold, claims the retailer.

Tesco Free Range Garlic Chicken Kievs (£1.98 for a 260g two-pack) went on sale in about 350 stores in April, after Doherty pitched them as a higher-welfare alternative to standard Tesco kievs in his Jimmy and the Giant supermarket television programme, shown on Channel 4 over the past three weeks.

The product was the first mass-market free-range chicken kiev in the UK, claimed Tesco commercial director Andrew Yaxley, who added that Tesco was “delighted” it was doing well in store.

“Working with Jimmy, our aim was to give customers more choice and access to higher-welfare meat, even when their budgets are tight,” he said.

A Tesco own-label sausage made with free-range pork belly, pork trim, bacon trim and heart, which was also championed by Doherty in the programme and has been on sale in 150 stores since April, had proved less successful, a company spokeswoman admitted. However, sales were improving and the retailer would keep it listed for the time being to give it a “good chance” of success, she added.

The third product promoted by Doherty in the three-part series - meatballs made from rose veal (meat from higher welfare dairy bull calves) - had failed a consumer taste test and not been listed, said Tesco, but it planned to start selling British rose veal from the beginning of 2013.

Doherty aims to encourage consumers to buy more veal to utilise the 150,000 dairy bull calves which are shot at birth annually instead of being reared for veal.

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