Owners of a slaughterhouse have been fined £300,000 for failing to stop odour pollution after making the lives of residents of a market town in Norfolk a misery during the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020.
Folk in Attleborough, near Norwich, were plagued by the stench from decaying poultry at a local abattoir owned by Banham Poultry (2018) Ltd, with locals describing the putrid smell as like “rotting bodies and flesh”. A court heard the Environment Agency received nearly 350 complaints from people living in the area surrounding the site.
District judge Andrew King was told how the abattoir had broken or damaged doors and walls, a roof so weak it collapsed, and how another part of the site was unsafe for Environment Agency staff to enter. He acknowledged practices at Banham Poultry had a “significant effect on quality of life” in the town.
