Stafford, CT – Home Pride Provisions a slaughterhouse in the area, and neighbors have been calling and writing the governor about the rotten smell, the first selectman, the Department of Environmental Protection and various other authorities. The complaints have intensified in the past two years since Brothers Quality Inc. took over and the odor radius expanded.
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The unofficial recording secretary for the half-dozen families has kept a 20-page log of developments and a 5-inch-thick file.
The town told them it has no odor ordinance, so they’ll have to call the state. The DEP’s odor line took their messages. But by the time inspectors came out, the worst of the odors were gone.
“It disperses with a puff of wind,” said Bob Girard, assistant director of DEP’s air engineering and enforcement division.
It’s not that the residents want to shut down the slaughterhouse; they just want it like it used to be. They had little problem with Home Pride, a meat-packing retailer where locals got their steaks and holiday hams. One neighbor recalls pool parties with her children’s friends in the ’90s. They never had what she calls gut-wrenching odors.
Several days a month, rabbis from their largest client, a kosher meat processor in Brooklyn, N.Y., come to carry out the Jewish commandment.
On one such day in late May, Rabbi Dov Berg, dressed in a brown leather butcher’s apron and white hard hat, sanitizes his knife. Behind him, a motorized line of sheep, each shackled by one hind leg, enters the kill floor area. Having said the appropriate prayer before the morning process, he turns, and in one swift sweep, slices the animal’s neck. In less than two minutes, the sheep loses consciousness. extended article [courant]
Last night the “slaughter house” was on the agenda of the Stafford WPCA – the neighbors want the slaughter house closed. They have some valid complaints but don’t understand the fragmentation of government – the conflicting & overlapping jurisdictions, etc.
The neighbors don’t know about meat processing & don’t distinguish between the smells of manure & blood.
There should be more on this in today’s Hartford Courant for you.
Any idea were their kosher producs are sold – under what labels, etc.?
if there is a slaughter house in a residential neighborhood you can be sure it has been there for a long time. no zoning board would allow new contruction of such a facility.
presuming it’s an old slaughterhouse; these people bought their houses knowing that this is what’s in their neighborhood. too bad.
Does anyone know which schita is coming out of this plant?
I have been in many slaughterhouses including in the room where the soaking and salting occurs and have never experienced terribly bad odors (obviously it won’t smell like roses) and never anything that would be evident in the surrounding neighborhood. Unless the facilities are unsanitary and discarded meet or body parts are left outside for extended periods of time, there is no reason for there to be a terrible odor. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that the odor emanates from the live sheep before they are slaughtered. Sheep have a strong odor – worse than cows – and if kept in doors without being extensively cleaned on a very regular basis there will be a strong odor.
Are they soaking and salting there? If so, that can explain the additional odor. In non-kosher processing, the meat is packaged relatively quickly, so there is less exposed meat and less smell.
The soaking and salting extends the period of time the meat is ‘hanging around’, especially if there is a wait for the soaking tank, so there will be a greater odor.
use refrigeration and then no odour.
Why was it necessary for the reporter to bring it up Shichitah. I sense that in addition to the odor, there is an undercurrent of Anti-Semitism here. The odor comes from the amount of meat processed not the method.
Explain why the horrible odor? is this the meat that finds itself to my plate, sanitary codes need to be reviewed….