A supermarket giant has come under fire after pigeons were killed at one of it's warehouses.

As a result their manager has received 'hundreds' of phone calls about the incident.

The Crayford Sainsbury's store, in Stadium Way, Dartford, was criticised by an animal welfare group for how the birds were killed.

London Wildlife Protection group took to social media to report the incident while including the manager's name and office number.

They posted on Facebook: "We have reached out to Sainsbury’s to remind them of their obligation to put deterrents in place and try all non lethal methods first. We have also asked them to fix the access point in the roof ASAP.

"Culling pigeons is cruel, ineffective and unnecessary. It is also illegal if the pigeons do not represent a real and demonstrable risk to public health and safety and if non-lethal methods of resolving the problem have not been tried and found to fail – which is clearly not the case here."

Sainsbury's said the extermination was needed after all other methods to get them to leave a warehouse were used.

A spokesman for the company said: "Our pest control experts have used a range of methods to try to encourage the birds to leave the warehouse. Unfortunately these were unsuccessful and an extermination was completed outside of store open hours as a last resort, in line with industry guidelines.”

Many shopper jumped to the defence of the pigeons that were killed and slammed to supermarket giant for their actions.

Sandra Wells said: “What a disgrace I’ve seen people kicking them out of the way as they walk along the pavement . Shame on Sainsburys for supporting this cruelty . Pigeons are intelligent they helped us during the war . Respect for all animals.”

Mandie Elson added: “Humans just disappoint me every minute every day. One day the wildlife and Mother Nature will take their/her revenge.”

However, not everyone was sympathetic, with some seeing no problem with the supermarket’s actions, claiming the pigeons were a health and safety problem.

Taelor Branco said: “More important problems in the world for me to care about. Pigeons are not endangered and in this scenario can pose health risks as there is food contamination concerned.”

Colin Asquith added: “Of course it’s necessary, they unquestionably do pose a risk to public health, shooting feral pigeons under the general licence is perfectly legal and the only positive way of stopping them returning.”