ANGRY farmers caused havoc on Winsford Industrial Estate last week by blocking the entrance to a supermarket distribution depot.

The protesters, who are believed to have come from Wales, stood at the gate of the Kwik Save depot for more than three hours on Thursday night, preventing delivery lorries from entering the premises.

They delayed a small number of deliveries before finally leaving at 1am on Friday morning.

A spokesman for the National Farmers Union confirmed that they had not organised the action and Philip Smallwood, former Winsford and Middlewich branch chairman, said that the lack of knowledge among Cheshire farmers of the incident suggested that the protesters were not local.

He did, however, support the farmers' actions, saying: "If it was organised by local farmers I would have been there, but unfortunately we didn't know anything about it.

"The main aim is to cause disruption and make their presence felt to create more awareness of what the public is buying, which is what I believe we've got to do."

Similar blockades are common across the country and the latest one in Winsford follows those which were held outside the Tesco and Morrisons distribution centres last December.

A spokesman for Somerfield, which owns the Kwik Save chain, said: "Somerfield supports British farmers with some 75 per cent of all meat sold being British.

"The National Farmers Union is fully aware of our sourcing policies and is happy that we are providing the British farming industry with sufficient support.

"These incidents often lead to farmers shooting themselves in the foot because they are stopping British produce getting to stores and to customers.

"Fortunately, they only delayed a small number of deliveries which were bringing stock back, and we were able to take sufficient action to ensure this did not affect our customers."

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