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A Los Angeles Superior Court judge believes that the humans of Irwindale, California, are more important than Sriracha, the life-giving hot sauce with the comforting rooster on the bottle. That judge ordered the company that makes Sriracha hot sauce to shut down its Irwindale processing plant, which local residents say produced fumes that burned their eyes and throats.
The decision from Judge Robert H. O'Brien came after a November 22 hearing in a lawsuit filed against Huy Fong Foods, the creator of the most famous version of Sriracha, by Irwindale residents last month. It's unclear at this moment what the fine print of O'Brien's shutdown order entails, but the company is expected to halt any kind of operations that might produce the alleged odors and make changes to eliminate or lessen them before re-starting production.
The Los Angeles Times reports that O'Brien acknowledged that there was no evidence that the alleged fumes posed a health risk, but still sided with the residents:
O'Brien acknowledged in his ruling that there was a "lack of credible evidence" linking the stated health problems to the odor, but said that the odor appears to be "extremely annoying, irritating and offensive to the senses warranting consideration as a public nuisance."
The injunction goes into effect as soon as O'Brien signs it. That could happen as early as Wednesday.