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Prestage Foods executive says little or no smell to come from pork plant (video)

Jere Null, Prestage Foods
Jere Null, Prestage Foods

MASON CITY – The Mason City council tonight heard again from Prestage Foods and an executive told them smell should not be an issue at the new $240 million pork processing plant.

Before the council gave its first approval to zoning changes south of 43rd Street SW and north of the Avenue of the Saints for the proposed Prestage Foods pork processing plant, COO Jere Null explained how the state-of-the-art plant is designed for maximum efficiency and all potential smells are tightly contained.

As Mr. Null explained about respecting environmental concerns, he touched upon the issue of smell, something some citizens worry will impact the community.

“Most of the odors in pork plant come from a rendering building,” Mr. Null said. “A rendering building is where your inedibles and all your parts you don’t eat go” and are then transformed into mostly animal feed. There will be a rendering building on the site, but it uses negative air flow – mostly no air going out. Any air that does escape is vented through a scrubber to remove any odor.

Virtually all of the plant will be enclosed, even from the moment the hogs (10,000 processed per shift) come off the trucks (roughly 185 of them on each truck). Even a wastewater pond will have a rubber cover over it.

“We don’t believe there will be a re-occuring odor of any significance that should reach the town”.

The prospect of more private hog confinements popping up in the area – with the accompanying smells – remains a concern.  Prestage will be paying competing prices to buy hogs from private farmers to supply the plant.  So, the concern moving forward will be less about smells from the plant itself, but smells created by possible private hog confinements that could come to the area.  However, Mr. Null says there should be plenty of hogs generally in the area market already to supply the plant.

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