The months-long battle between Huy Fong Foods, the maker of the popular Sriracha hot sauce, and the southern California city Irwindale is over after the city council came to its senses. They decided that keeping jobs in the city was more important than calling the company’s factory a nuisance because of the smell.
The battle had been raging since last fall, when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the city’s citizens, who had filed a lawsuit to get the company to stop producing the hot sauce. They called the smell produced by the sauce “annoying, irritating and offensive” and complained that it caused eye irritation.
Earlier this month, David Tran, who created the Sriracha sauce, refused to stop making the sauce or move the plant. He said that the peppers he uses are grown in California and it would be best to stay closer to where they are grown.
The Irwindale city council met on Wednesday and unanimously decided to end the battle, with Huy Fong Foods staying. “We have to keep employment in Irwindale. We have to expand. It's good for Irwindale. It's good for California,” Mayor Mark Breceda said after the decision, which he also supported, notes Reuters.
Lawmakers decided not to pass a resolution that declared the factory a “nuisance,” which would have required it to move.