Agricultural odours: 25 years of reducing complaints about barns and manure storages using the minimum distance separation formulae.

Ontario in Canada has a diverse livestock and poultry industry. Two million of Ontario's eleven million residents live in rural areas, but only 5% live on livestock and poultry farms, being outnumbered by their rural, non-livestock neighbours by 20:1. The increasing size, complexity, specialisation and concentration of livestock and poultry farms coupled with rural neighbours who have little or no family or business connection to them has resulted in an escalation in the number of odour complaints about barn and manure storage locations. Ontario-developed Minimum Distance Separation I and II formulae have helped site over 100,000 non-compatible uses, such as severed lots, away from livestock and poultry facilities, and similarly sited over 20,000 barns. However, they are under review because of the need to reflect the current and anticipated state of the livestock and poultry industry, the changing needs of the rural community, and to make it easier to apply for the growing number of municipal staff with little knowledge of the agricultural industry.