A SENIOR union member fears farmers in Herefordshire and Worcestershire will be hardest hit by the fuel crisis.

Bob Forster, Regional Director at the National Farmers' Union, said many of the areas' farms concentrated on poultry.

His comments came after Sun Valley Poultry -Herefordshire's largest employer - said unless oil reached its feed mills today eight million chickens and one million turkeys could begin to starve.

But he added the Herefordshire- based company was not alone in fearing for the welfare of its livestock.

"Farmers are not worried about business at the moment, they are more worried about their livestock," he said.

"Food stuff is running short with no way of getting it to them. Farmers are extremely worried about this, and it's the money which concerns them.

"Cattle are being made ready for market and farmers cannot just change their feed to grass overnight."

He added the blockades - which had brought harvests to a standstill throughout the county - was not part of the NFU but individual farmers working by themselves.

"Farmers are sympathetic to the pickets," he said.

"Fuel costs have come at the end of a time when profits have been hit."

But he said it was not just the feeding of livestock which was going to cause problems for farms, it was the inability to transport stock. He claimed with many farms getting ready to move livestock to be processed, being unable to move them will mean they could die.

"They will die of stress and lack of ventilation because they will be too big for their houses and smother one another," he said.

"Then there is the problem of distributing them if they are processed. Herefordshire and Worcestershire have the most immediate problems because of the amount of poultry farming in the area.

"But we are talking to the Government to deliver emergency supplies to farmers for their livestock."