UNION CITY, Ind. (AP) — A proposal to build a $10 million pet food flavoring plant is raising a stink in eastern Indiana, where residents question whether the number of jobs it would bring would be worth the potential impact on their quality of life.
Nebraska-based Naturally Recycled Proteins wants to build a plant on 20 acres near an ethanol plant about two miles outside Union City. The plant would use a slurry made from grinding up old laying hens to make a protein and flavor additive for dog foods.
Company officials say no chicken processing will occur on the site. They acknowledge there's a potential for odor but say golf course owners within 6.5 miles of the company's Iowa plant have never received odor complaints from customers.
That hasn't eased concerns in Randolph County, where Cheryl Tillman worries the plant would smell worse than the hog farm she and her husband operate.
"They keep saying this is potentially 30 to 68 jobs," she told The Star Press of Muncie. "But I cannot understand 68 jobs being enough of a value to change the quality of life for 4,000 people in Union City. There's no balance to that."
Tillman questioned whether NRP had chosen the site near the ethanol plant, which is currently zoned for agricultural use, in an attempt to mask the potential smell of chicken slurry.
She said she and her husband called people who live near NRP's plant in Steamboat Rock, Iowa.
"All the neighbors said you need to do whatever you can to keep this plant from moving in," Cheryl Tillman said.
NRP CEO Al Koch has said the plant would use a closed-loop system and that it would not involve live or dead birds. The chicken processing would be done at the laying facilities, and the slurry from grinding the animals would arrive in tanker trucks and then be mixed with grain, dried, ground and shipped away.
Randolph County Commissioner Troy Prescott said the area needs the jobs the plant could bring. But Union City Mayor Bryan Conklin said he worries that a potentially offensive odor could hurt future economic development efforts.
Prescott said that even though many people at first objected to ethanol plants because of odor concerns, few find the odor offensive.
Prescott and two other county commissioners plan to travel to Iowa to check odors at NRP's existing plant before deciding on the company's request to rezone the land for industrial use. A vote is scheduled April 4.