Domino’s Pizza is the latest fast food chain and the first pizza company in Australia to embrace free range chicken, which has been sourced locally and is available from today.

Domino’s CEO Don Meij said the decision to switch to free range chicken for its pizza was part of the company’s strategy to improve the quality of its ingredients.

“We are serious about improving the quality of our ingredients as we know it makes our pizzas taste better,” he said.

“We know Australian consumers are more aware of the food they are buying these days — where the ingredients come from and how the animals are looked after. It shouldn’t be any different when they order pizza. Not only does the chicken taste better, we believe it’s also the right thing to do.”

Domino’s has also launched a new television commercial to promote its new free range offering, filmed at a free range certified farm in Redland Bay, Queensland, which supplies its chicken to Domino’s.

“We want our customers to know we are proud of our recent improvements and there’s no better way to show that than by using real people in our television campaigns,” Meij said.

“Our new commercials feature a real free range chicken farmer from Queensland and one of our Facebook fans who loved our BBQ Chicken and Bacon pizza so much we wanted him to be the first to try it with free range chicken.”

Domino’s Pizza’s announcement comes shortly after fellow fast food franchise, Hungry Jack’s, announced it will soon be launching its first organic beef burger, called the Country Burger, using meat supplied by certified organic suppliers.