Wellness Loses Tax Break Due To Persistent Stench – Truth about Pet Food

Back in 2016, residents of Mishawaka, Indiana were complaining about the smells coming from a Wellness pet food facility. From a local news story: “Sometimes it smells like rotten fish, because they make cat food and dog food. It just depends on the ingredients they’re making, but cat food is the worst,” said Dale “Woody” Emmons, 1st District, Mishawaka Common Council. “Depending on what they’re making, the odor varies; depends on the wind factor, depends on whether it’s a muggy day. And sometimes it’s very hard to breathe. When the wind comes from the west, it settles in this area, and you can’t have outside functions.”

Below is a Google Earth image of the Mishawaka, Indiana Wellpet plant.

In 2021 Wellness told Mishawaka city officials they were planning a $30 million dollar expansion of the plant which would include odor reducing technology. A 2021 news story about the expansion explained that Wellness was “expected to file requests for tax abatements for the expansion”. Wellness did file for those tax breaks, and the city provided them. But…

The city council of Mishawaka just revoked the tax abatements for Wellness Pet Food because very little of the promised efforts by Wellness have not been completed. From WNDU News on May 9, 2023:

“This week the Mishawaka Common Council voted unanimously to take the tax breaks back. They were designed to help expand the plant and to install odor abatement equipment. In the past two years, only a fraction of the improvements promised have happened.”

The bad smells of making pet food is not limited to Wellness. In 2020 a lawsuit was filed against Purina Pet Food regarding “noxious odors” in the neighborhoods surrounding the company’s Allentown, Pennsylvania pet food plant. From the law firm website: “…local properties have been ‘physically invaded by noxious odors…which entered plaintiffs’ properties originating from defendant’s facility.’ The odors, which, according to the details of the lawsuit, come from the process of drying and cooking ingredients such as raw proteins and animal fats, produce ‘highly odiferous emissions’ that are released into the air surrounding the facility. The lawsuit explained that, in addition to the odors, the facility also produces massive amounts of organic waste. This waste, which is disposed of on-site at the outset, is not properly attended to given the nature of its ingredients, such as animal fats. Additionally, because the Purina facility has an on-site wastewater treatment process, this process of treating waste creates additional malodorous byproducts.”

Questions…

Are there more concerns than odor for those living near a pet food manufacturing plant?

Is the “rotten fish” smell actually rotten fish? Are the illegal ingredients of pet food allowed by FDA (such as diseased animals and animals that died other than by slaughter) not only causing the stench, but could these ingredients also be a health hazard to those that inhale them day in and day out?

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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