Jamie Oliver Says Sorry to Sainsbury's
UK - Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has written an open letter to every member of staff at Sainsbury's, apologising for an outburst in which he criticised the supermarket over its involvement on his upcoming show exposing the standards of battery bred chickens.The letter was sent to 150,000 staff after a tense telephone conversation between Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King and the TV chef earlier this week. Oliver, 32, is paid £1.2m a year to front Sainsbury's advertising campaigns and has been the face of the grocer since 2000.
The chef, who attempted to change the nation's eating habits with a campaign to reform school dinners, has turned his attention to the rearing of intensively farmed chickens.
In a show, Jamie's Fowl Dinners, to be broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday night, he highlights the appalling conditions in which some chickens are kept. In an astonishing attack ahead of the broadcast, he criticised Sainsbury's for refusing to turn up for a public debate on chicken farming.
He told reporters: "It is shocking that the people that I work for did not turn up on the day. I do not know why. The fact that your PR department has not even got the confidence to turn up and talk about what you do ... how dare they not? I was really upset."