Why 'stinky tofu' shopowner had to be prosecuted

I refer to the letter from Marianne Tulleners headlined, 'Officials should target real polluters' (South China Morning Post, May 4).

Ms Tulleners is clearly unhappy with the overall air pollution situation in Hong Kong and feels we should be concentrating our enforcement action on smoky vehicles, etc, rather than prosecuting someone for what she regards as a relatively minor odour offence coming from a tofu cooking shop.

The first point I should make is that the shop concerned was not making normal tofu. The case in question involved the production of fermented tofu, sometimes called 'stinky tofu', which generates an all-pervading stench which spreads for hundreds of metres and can make many people nauseous. Closed windows offer little defence.

Whilst the food does have its aficionados who seem to be immune to the stink, most people find the smell more than highly objectionable and it has been affecting the entire immediate neighbourhood of the shop since late 1998.

Since the shop began production of fermented tofu, we have received a large number of complaints from local residents, not just one or two passers-by as Ms Tulleners seems to believe. The shopowner has been prosecuted four times under the Air Pollution Control Ordinance for emitting an objectionable odour.

More recently she failed to comply with an air pollution abatement notice and we had no option but to initiate further prosecution action. Failure to do so would have been denying the local residents a proper legal remedy and would arguably have left ourselves liable for censure by the Ombudsman.