Residents of Atlantic awoke Sunday morning to a smell that wafted throughout the town and rural areas of Cass County as winds began to pick up from the southeast at 15-to 30-miles per hour, prompted dozens of people to complain on social media sites and ask “What is awful smell?” The odor was compared to sewage backups, cat litter boxes and even decaying bodies.  Others thought the odor came from manure being spread on farms south of town. Many were under the mistaken impression it was coming all the way from Southwest Iowa Egg, near Massena.

Rich Hall, General Manager of Southwest Iowa Egg Cooperative near Massena, told KJAN News, today (Monday), the odor definitely didn’t come from their facility. He says he lives half-way between southwest Iowa Egg and Atlantic, and there was “Absolutely no odor,” at his house. He said he was in Atlantic Sunday afternoon and also smelled the offensive odor, but stated clearly that “It had nothing to do with Southwest Iowa Egg.”

Hall says he’s not the only one who can verify the odor did not come from Southwest Iowa Egg. He says “I can line up a lot of people that would there was no odor between Massena and Atlantic. I have no idea what it was. I don’t know what it could have been.”

The operation has approximately 850,000 laying hens producing over 16 million dozen eggs annually. A byproduct of the business is chicken litter which provides nutrients for about 4,000 acres of farm land. Hall says “It dumbfounds me that we would be associated with the odor in Atlantic, because we aren’t anywhere close to Atlantic with any of our equipment or any of our facilities.”