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Food

British Creamery Smells So Fucking Rank that People in Surrounding Neighborhood Can't Sleep

Davidstow residents have described the odor as "a cross between gone off fish and cheese, with a bit of sewage chucked in."
stinky creamery
Modified photo via Getty Images

For the past hundred-plus years, there has been a widely spread, widely shared belief that eating cheese before bed can cause nightmares. The idea has been questioned by psychologists and has been tested in several small-scale sleep studies, but it has not been “clinically proven,” one way or another. In the mid 2000s, the British Cheese Board conducted its own not-at-all biased experiment, in which 200 volunteers were given a small piece of cheese just before they went to bed.

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For a full week, the participants kept track of their dreams, and the Cheese Board was delighted to discover that none of them woke up drenched in sweat and frantically clawing at their pajamas. “Now that our Cheese and Dreams study has finally debunked the myth that cheese gives you nightmares we hope that people will think more positively about eating cheese before bed,” Nigel White, the secretary of the organization, said at the time.

White may not want to ask the residents of Davidstow, England for their opinions about cheese and restful sleep, at least not until Dairy Crest does something about its rank-ass smell. According to The Independent, the village’s residents have repeatedly complained about a rancid odor—described as “a cross between gone off fish and cheese, with a bit of sewage chucked in”—that is constantly produced by the nearby Dairy Crest creamery.

“The worst thing is that we typically seem to get the smell in the middle of the night,” Davidstow local Andrew McKersie told Cornwall Live. “We're in bed and suddenly you are woken up by the stink, and then you can't get back to sleep, so you can't sleep properly."

He and his neighbors have spent the past several years complaining about both the smell and the noise coming from the plant, and the country’s Environmental Agency has their collective backs. The EA has noted that Dairy Crest is “noncompliant” with its environmental permit, and has ordered them to (liiiiterally) clean up their act.

“We expect all regulated sites to comply with the legal conditions of their permit,” an agency spokesperson said. “Dairy Crest must take all necessary steps to address the odour and noise issues with their treatment plant.”

Dairy Crest has invested £85 million ($110 million) in expanding the creamery to keep up with demand for its cheeses, including its well-loved Cathedral City cheddar. In May, the company announced that it was working toward increasing its cheese production at the Davidstow plant from 55,000 tons of cheese per year to 77,000 tons. (SLEEP TIGHT, EVERYONE!)

The cheesemaker also says that it’s totally working on that stench. “We will continue to consult with the EA and the local community to ensure we are addressing their concerns,” a Dairy Crest spokesperson told Cornwall Live. “Davidstow is central to our business and Dairy Crest is committed to playing a positive role in the community as an employer, as a customer of local farmers and as a good neighbor.”

Right now, it looks like they’ve managed two out of three.