MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas – A Pilgrim’s Pride plant in East Texas has started dumping chicken byproducts at a East Texas industrial landfill. Nearby residents have since started complaining about the smell.

Texas environmental officials said that since at least last Monday, the plant in Mount Pleasant, Texas has been legally dumping most of its chicken byproducts into a 20-acre regulated industrial landfill in Camp County.

Pilgrim’s Pride received a permit to use the landfill about 20 years ago, but only started using the site as a disposal site last week after its protein conversion plant where chicken byproducts are usually sent caught fire on July 21. A backup plan to use a third-party site for the by products failed when there was a fire there as well

The company said that it will divert at least 90 percent of the waste to other landfills.

"We do understand people's concerns. We want to be a good neighbor and it is costing us a considerable amount of money to find other solutions around this," said Pilgrim's Pride spokesman Ray Atkinson. "I want to stress this isn't normal business practice. This is not something we wanted to do."

Source: Associated Press