Poultry Specialist Says Ranchers Make Proper Effort to Fight Odor

The operators of two egg ranches near Moorpark are doing all they can to quell the smell generated by 410 tons of chicken manure a day, a poultry expert said Thursday.

Donald Bell, a poultry specialist from UC Davis, spoke at a meeting of the Egg Production Industry Advisory Committee, which was formed almost two years ago to address the smell problems at Egg City and Eggs West near Moorpark.

The 3.5 million chickens at the two ranches produce about 410 tons of manure each day. The resulting odor has been a continuing cause of complaints by residents in nearby Fillmore and is expected to worsen in the hot summer months.

Bell also told the committee that an odor-eating product that was being promoted at the meeting has not undergone enough testing to be safely applied at the ranches.

“You don’t go and attack an existing problem with an unknown product,” he said.

Many products claim to reduce chicken manure smell, but none have been proven to be effective, Bell said.

“We still do not have control over nature,” he said.

At the meeting, representatives of Environmental Materials and Services in Agoura Hills promoted a product they call EMSC that they say works like an outdoor odor eater by competing with odor-causing bacteria for food sources.

Company President Dale Hallcom brought several plastic sandwich bags full of manure that was treated with the organically based product. He passed the bags around the room and had members of the committee smell the manure.

The samples smelled like wet dirt.

Hallcom said EMSC is undergoing federal testing at two facilities.

But Bell and Richard Carrott, chief executive of Egg City, criticized organizers of the meeting for allowing Hallcom and his staff to promote their product.

“This looks like amateur politics at best,” Carrott said.

Al Escoto, an aide to Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee, said the meeting was organized not to promote any product but to discuss solutions to the stench problem.

The committee includes representatives of the Air Pollution Control District, the county Agriculture Commission, the city of Fillmore and operators of the two egg ranches.

Egg City, once the largest egg producer in the world, has about 3 million chickens and has been in operation since 1960. Eggs West, which has about half a million chickens, opened nearby four years later.

Bell said the two ranches have adopted a suggestion he made about a year ago, spreading the manure out in thin layers to dry and removing it daily.

He said Egg City and Eggs West could reduce odors further by spending millions of dollars on a process that uses conveyor belts and solar heaters to remove and dry the manure faster. But he added that those methods may not be economically feasible to the ranches.

Carrott said his company has been testing a new process of handling manure that could decrease the stench. But he said he could not disclose how the process works until tests are completed.

He added that the company is in the midst of a legal squabble among its board of directors, and the money for further testing is being held up.