Odor Eater : An organic product to eliminate ‘nose’ pollution from livestock farms is being tested.

“If you’re going to stink up the place, go somewhere else.” That’s been the admonition fishmongers, farmers and stablemen have heard through the ages. Thus, in California, the huge and odorous cattle pens way out on Interstate 5 are equidistant from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Closer to home, the egg ranches on a barren ridge between Moorpark and Fillmore in the ‘60s, tried to duplicate that feat. But, according to Dr. Don Bell, UC Riverside professor of agriculture, “People keep following the farms out of town.”

Gesturing to a site near his office in Moreno Valley, he told me that a city of more than 100,000 people had just been incorporated around eight chicken ranches. This inevitably leads to what he characterized as a “build and complain” syndrome.

In Ventura County, the complaints about chicken ranch smells have landed on the desk of Richard Baldwin, county air pollution control officer.

His job is to enforce the law. But in the case of “nose” pollution, the law isn’t there. “It specifically excludes odors from agricultural . . . raising of crops, flocks and herds,” he said. “My hands were tied.”

At this juncture, I expected to hear a note of desperation in his voice. But he seemed to think there was a solution in sight. It was something Baldwin and Enforcement Manager Allen Danzig stumbled on.

Just over the county line in Agoura Hills, they found a fellow--Dale Hallcom--selling a product to horse owners. It is a sort of outdoor odor eater you spray on animal waste. It’s organic, like the enzymes some people put into their composters to speed the decaying process.

Danzig tested it, using some chicken manure from an egg ranch near Moorpark. “Within three days of being sprayed with the product, one sample had an odor reduction of 70%. The second sample was 100% free of the sour odor, and only a light ammonia odor was present when crumbled by hand after seven days.”

He wrote to two local egg ranchers, urging them to contact the manufacturer and arrange a test. Remember, folks, the county can’t mandate odor controls in agricultural situations, so Danzig’s letter was only a friendly suggestion. And unprecedented. “But we were desperate,” Baldwin said.

Meanwhile, two Ventura County supervisors had organized a “working group” to mitigate the problem.

Two members of this group, Larry Schuman, director of ranch operations at Egg City, and Ron Thomas, production manager at Eggs West, say they are studying Danzig’s suggestion but expressed worry about the cost. Schuman, who minds 3.5 million producing hens, thinks the product is effective but expensive. Tests at Eggs West were inconclusive.

I discussed the product with UC Riverside’s Bell, who will be acting as adviser to the county’s working group. He was skeptical about such solutions, which he terms “foo-foo powders. . . . I know of 50 of them.”

So, I decided to check it out myself. Hallcom’s product is being tested at the chicken-raising facilities of Foster Farms and Zacky Farms, but the results aren’t in.

But Hallcom claims that a chicken-waste program has been up and running for a year at Petersons Chickens, in Tacoma, Wash. And mighty Harris Ranch, operator of the spread along Interstate 5, is about to start testing a Hallcom product long in use in La Mirada at Valley View Farms. There, a thousand cows, freed of smells and flies for the last several years, give milk in a neighborhood so suburbanized that their ranch has shopping centers on three sides.

And no complaints. When I called there, the operators, the Van Damm family, had just been visited by officials of the Seoul, South Korea, sewer department, checking out Hallcom’s product.

Shepard Brothers Inc., a Brea manufacturer and Thornell Corp. of Penfield, N.Y., offer similar biotechnology. Chemist Tony Terranova of Brea explained why there is suddenly such a boom in sales of these “natural” compounds. “The city is selling for us. They want the odor reduced and get us in to do something about it.”

This might be a way to solve our local “build and complain” syndrome.

* FYI

* Ventura County Supervisors Maggie Erickson Kildee and Vicky Howard have organized a “working group,” the Egg Industry Production Advisory Committee, which will meet June 27. For details call Al Escoto, 654-2276.

* For information on organic odor control, call Dale Hallcom at Environmental Materials and Services (818) 597-8737.