The Great British Food Fight will kick off Channel 4’s winter season on Channel 4. The series will bring together four of the country’s most renowned chefs – Heston Blumenthal, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay – for the Great British Food Fight, a season of programmes celebrating the best of British food and exploring issues around animal welfare in a number of hard-hitting films.

The season is a follow-up to the Big Food Fight in January this year, which delivered some of Channel 4’s highest ratings for 2008 and put food production and animal welfare at the centre of public debate.

Kicking off the new season will be Big Chef, Little Chef (w/t), in which Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal tries to breathe fresh life into the menu of the Little Chef roadside restaurant chain. Can a chef with a reputation for excellence, innovation and £200 meals turn around the fortunes of this iconic but struggling British institution?

Heston Blumenthal said: “I have such fond childhood memories of Little Chef and was really excited about the challenge to put them well and truly back on the map. Everyone has a story to tell about this much loved and truly iconic British brand. However, this project has proved enormously complex working within the parameters and demands of the Motorway Services Industry.”

After cooking up Jamie’s Fowl Dinners for the Big Food Fight, Jamie Oliver will be turning his attention to the pig-farming industry, aiming to do for pigs and pork what he helped do for chickens and eggs earlier in the year. Jamie Saves Our Bacon will examine why Britain’s pig farmers are going out of business and what can be done to support them. The programme will show exactly how pigs live and die to put pork, ham and bacon on our plates and aims to help consumers make better-informed choices.

Jamie Oliver said: “Earlier this year we showed that if you give consumers the facts about chicken welfare they will make up their own minds – and the sales of higher welfare chickens and eggs have gone through the roof as a result. Now I want to see if we can do the same for pigs.”

“Pork is our second favourite meat, but the British pig industry is on its knees. Our farmers say that 70% of the pork we import is from countries with lower welfare standards than ours and would have been illegal to produce here. All our farmers want is a level playing field with Europe. This programme is a unique opportunity, and the support of the British public, as well as government and retailers, is critical in deciding the future – possibly the very survival – of our pig industry.”

While Jamie tackles pigs, fellow campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, will stay focused on the humble chicken. In Chicken, Hugh & Tesco Too (w/t) he takes on Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco, which is still reluctant to join Hugh’s free range chicken revolution to improve animal welfare.

The programme follows Hugh as he becomes a Tesco shareholder and tries to convince fellow shareholders to help him put his case to Tesco’s board of directors. Hugh also explores if higher welfare indoor-bred birds – or Freedom Foods chicken – could provide the nation with more humanely-produced yet affordable chicken as people feel the pinch in the face of the economic downturn.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said: “I’m very excited about Food Fight 2 (as I like to call it). We achieved so much last time, and it was great to link up with Jamie on the whole chicken welfare story. I’m taking that campaign to the next level in the new season with a one hour film about my confrontation with Tesco. It shows what progress we’ve made, but also how much further we could go if a company like Tesco decided to really get behind the issue, and use its influence to change the industry. I’m also really looking forward to Jamie’s pig show, which I’ll be making a little contribution to….”

In Gordon’s Great British Nightmare, Gordon Ramsay will be campaigning for viewers to start patronising local restaurants. He will also be passing on tips to restaurant owners on how best to cope with the credit crunch.

And as part of the True Stories strand on More4, Pig Business follows a four year investigation by eco-campaigner Tracy Worcester, the Marchioness of Worcester, looking at intensive pig farming and its impact on human and environmental health.