Stinking meat factory and body parts on the lawn cause years of hell for neighbour

Friday, 2 August 2019

A Hororata woman says she was left a virtual recluse and in the grip of depression after years of enduring the horrific smell of a nearby meat rendering factory.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE BELOW

Body parts of dead animals left on her lawn and years of enduring the unbearable stench of a nearby meat factory led a Canterbury woman to two breakdowns.

But she is now ecstatic after the company shut its doors this week, months on from its most recent in a string of fines for contaminating land and causing the surrounding area to stink.

The Wallace Group, which for four years has operated a rendering plant outside Hororata to break down animal parts for industrial use, stopped accepting material at the site at the start of the week and has ceased processing.

For one of its nearest neighbours, the end of work – and years of torment – is life-changing.

'I'm ecstatic that they are closed,' the woman said. 'It gives me my life and my sanity back, and my enjoyment of my property. I don't want the plant to open again.'

Problems began after the firm took over from a previous meat rendering company in 2015, said the woman, who asked not to be named.

First there was the traffic – trucks and tankers going past her house every five minutes from 5am to 2am the following day to support the plant's relentless operations.

Then there was the smell, a stench that emanated from effluent ponds, soak pits and through rusted holes in the corrugated iron building, despite it supposedly being airtight.

'I'm used to country smells and have lived in the country for 30 years,' she said. 'Bad smells don't worry me but these ones are vomit-inducing.'

The woman said she had to keep windows permanently shut, stopped going outside and avoided having friends over, and the smell seeped into her laundry.

Last month the woman says she found half a pig's head in her garden, which she believes was dropped by hawks that picked it up from the factory.

Body parts also turned up in her garden and on the road outside her house, most likely, she believes, dropped by hawks that have taken to circling her property or dragged in by scavengers from the plant's offal pit.

'All of a sudden I got these pieces of animals arriving in my garden. I found half a pig's head on my lawn at the beginning of June. I've had cows' hooves, calves' legs and other pieces of body that I can't work out what they are.'

The disruption to her life – becoming isolated, spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to try solve the problem and offering to sell her home of 15 years to Wallace – has taken its toll.

'I've had two nervous breakdowns, I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and serious depression and am under a psychologist,' she said.

'I've become a hoarder, because when you lose something you replace it with something else that you can hold onto that is tangible. I lost the enjoyment of my house.'

All that looks set to change after the plant stopped taking in any more material this week.

It is not clear why Wallace Group has closed the site or whether the move is permanent.

Repeated efforts by Stuff to speak to the company about the factory and the woman's concerns went unanswered.

Other media have reported the firm recently sent a letter to butchers across the South Island to explain a major client in Indonesia has a zero-tolerance approach to pork material and Wallace Group does not have the ability to separate it out.

Newshub reported that the closure of the site will force butchers and supermarkets to discard their own by-products, put jobs and businesses at risk and force animal by-products to be sent to landfill.

Environment Canterbury (ECan) said Wallace Canterbury Ltd and Wallace Group Ltd Partnership were fined $6250 for seven infringement notices over the last two years related to discharging contaminants to land and unacceptable odours polluting the air in Hororata, three times in breach of abatement notices. The most recent offence was on March 28.

ECan, which confirmed that work has stopped at the site, would not comment on whether it is investigating Wallace's operations.

A spokesman said: 'We have addressed issues relating to material left on site and there are other facilities in Canterbury that can appropriately handle this waste.'

Animal guts from the factory were also left on the road near her house, she says.

Wallace Group is based in the Waikato, in Waitoa, and has rendering plants there and at Washdyke in Timaru, Hororata, Dunedin, and Silverstream in Otago.

Rendered products are mostly used for animal and pet food, and in biofuels and the chemical industry.