Residents near Liberty Village upset with stench from pork factory

TORONTO – Some residents of Toronto’s Liberty Village are complaining that a nearby slaughterhouse is producing a wretched smell that hovers over the growing neighbourhood.

The Quality Meats factory opened over 80 years ago on Tecumseth Street south of Wellington Street West.

But now the slaughterhouse sits in the shadow of a condo boom and new residents are put-off by the pungent pork.

One Liberty Village resident told Global News today that the area sometimes “smells like death.”

And an area dog walker, Laura Cooke, said the passing trucks hauling pigs can drive her dogs wild.

“With the dog park around the corner the dogs get really freaked out by the smell,” she said.

But Rea Toich, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 60 years and can see the factory from her backyard says the smell is getting better and the company doesn’t deserve the negativity.

“I’ve been here 60 years. If you would’ve been here then, compared to now, this is like Chanel Number 5,” she said.

Toich added that people moving into the neighbourhood should have done their research.

“The people that come in the neighbourhood now, they knew what they were coming into,” she said.

And Quality Meats told Global News in a statement that they “have worked closely with our neighbours to address potential concerns and we remain committed to continuing to do so.”

The company also claimed to employ “a number of measures to mitigate and minimize any impacts on the community.”

But working with the community is not enough for one local realtor who lives and works in the neighbourhood.

Realtor Brad Lamb said in an interview Tuesday that the neighbourhood has changed since Quality Meats set up shop.

“It’s one thing to be quiet about it. It’s another thing to say ‘now listen, this is a problem we want a timeframe for when this is gonna be out of the neighbourhood’.”

But despite calls for the plants removal, current city zoning bylaws protect it.