Court rules that poo smell in the country is legal

The highest administrative court in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, ruled on Monday that bad smells are part-and-parcel of agriculture. The ruling was made after neighbours complained about a farmer’s plans to extend his chicken hatches.

The poultry’s poo, they argued would pollute their air. The judges had discussed whether there should be an upper limit on just how bad the countryside can smell. At first an administrative court in Düsseldorf came down on the side of the plaintiffs. But the senior court was having none of it.



They argued that the countryside is the countryside and people there are already used to the smell of dung, or had better get used to it fast. The decision was a so-called Grundsatzurteil, a ruling which establishes a judicial principle. The judges argued that the plaintiffs were themselves farmers or at least had been and in this respect had done their own share of muck shovelling in the past.

They said that in places where bad smells are a fact of life, stronger and longer lasting smells are something which inhabitants should be able to cope with. In this regard they distinguished between farming areas, where the inhabitants have built a certain tolerance for bad odours, as opposed to villages and larger settlements.