Posted on 04/26/2014 1:59:44 PM PDT by jazusamo
Let me state my bias up front. I like hot sauce.
I like it on eggs. I like it in ramen. I like it on stir-fry dishes and Mexican food, and I don't think you can honestly call yourself a Californian if you're not a hot sauce lover.
And so I went to Irwindale last week to investigate the Sriracha sauce standoff. As you may have heard, city officials are waging battle against the manufacturer, responding to citizen complaints that jalapeño-scented air blowing out of the hot sauce plant can irritate your throat and make your eyes water, especially during the late summer, which is pepper-grinding season.
Let me tell you one more thing. I like Irwindale, even if it did draft an ill-advised resolution declaring the Sriracha plant a public nuisance. And let's be honest: You won't hear a lot of people say they like the tiny industry-rich San Gabriel town of 1,400, which is perhaps not the prettiest place on earth unless you find warehouses, business parks, a dog food factory and rock quarries attractive.
But Irwindale does things in its own fashion, as do many little L.A. County burgs that have little reason to exist other than for local lords to belly up to the trough of robust commerce. If nothing else, such towns keep headline writers employed.
Irwindale, for example, blew $20 million trying to woo the Raiders. A public official in the town was once indicted for rigging an election, and there are those who think that even today ballots should be checked to see if the voters are still among the living. In a delicious caper in the 1970s, a mayor was drugged with spiked enchiladas and then photographed in compromising positions with a nude woman as part of a blackmail plot...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If Irwindale doesn’t want them, Texas will be happy to take them.
Thanks Jazumano. Here’s to hoping he can work it out. I’m sure he has a number of employees, and I don’t want to see the business or them causes harm here.
This is one of those issues where easy answers may not be readily available. That’s too bad.
There are plenty of commercially-available deodorizing scrubbers for food plants. I wonder if he's experimented with one yet. It's not hard to find the manufacturers of such systems.
4 min broadcast about the Sriracha hubbub in Irwindale:
The city of Irwindale has only ONE THOUSAND VOTERS and is essentially a business.
Sriracha brought in SIXTEEN MILLION DOLLARS to the city.
Do you know how many complaints they have had there? FOUR —count ‘em.
Before they moved east to Irwindale, they’d been making their product the same way in Rosemead for THIRTY YEARS, and how many complaints did they get there during that time?
ZERO.
Right before this anti-Sriracha city council vote, the Mayor and two council members were charged with CORRUPTION.
Some time back I read he had people from air filtering companies looking at the problem but don’t recall who or if any companies were named.
These councilmen are going to have to be patient and work with him instead of shutting him down or he’ll be forced to leave and if that happens everyone will be losers.
Amen to that. Good find, thanks!
That’s the politics of Irwindale that I knew.
The "city" of Industry, which stretches about 15 miles along San Jose Creek northeast of Pico Rivera has a lot of warehouses, manufacturers, car dealerships and a big shopping mall but only about 200 voters. And Vernon, which has an even smaller population had a mayor a few years ago who claimed as his residence a structure that was clearly an office building.
Literally.
The "town" should be in the business of flood diversion.
bfl
FWIW, not all hot sauces are the same.
The capsaicin in capsicum peppers feels hot. It can hurt; but, it’s only a simulation of a burn. OTOH garlic (the other source of heat in sriracha sauce) can produce very real chemical burns.
Ever drive into Gilroy, CA on a hot afternoon?
A few decades ago, I traveled a couple of hundred miles every other weekend to Before CA I5 was built, and part of the trip was trough the town of Vacaville (Cowville) where there was an Onion dehydrating plant. It was the most pleasant segment of the trip, since I love onion.
An ancillary claim to fame was the famous (now closed) Nut Tree Airport which attracted private flyers for 100 mile radius, to visit the Nut Tree Restaurant, which housed a fantastic bookstore and civil and military aviation souvenir shop. Flying in there for a meal was always memorable.
Not all food odors are irritating.
From having driven through Albany, OR, I’ll have to agree.
Forever, Louisville, Ky. has had a Ralston Purina plant in the middle of the town that processes Soy Beans.
God awful smell.
Then there is the pulp mills around Jacksonville, ugh/
I can believe that. You have to live in these places to understand their full shall I say smell. Phew.
True and I am familiar with Vacaville. The smell can be unpleasant.
Yes. LOL
Several years ago I was about to be transferred to Orlando and found a home near Deland.
Almost bought the place then decided to go visit it on a blustery windy north west stormy day and the smell nearly knocked ya on the ground.
To the north west of the place was a chicken farm no one told us about.
Man o man what a stench.
No wonder they wanted to sell.
LOL I can believe it.
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