Chicago Judge Orders Pullman Innovations Animal-Feed Plant Shut Until January 2027 Over Nauseating Fumes

A Cook County Circuit Court judge clamped down on an embattled South Side polluter on October 14, 2026, ordering Pullman Innovations to immediately halt all odour-generating operations at its Chicago animal-feed processing facility.

The plant reeked of decay.

Following hundreds of desperate neighbourhood grievances, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pushed the joint enforcement lawsuit into court in August 2026. The resulting temporary restraining order freezes the facility's polluting processing lines through at least January 14, 2027—the date set for the next formal hearing—unless operator A-F Acquisition LLC can prove complete compliance with clean-air mandates before that deadline.

The facility, positioned at 2701 East 100th Street, has churned industrial by-products from commercial edible oils into animal-feed ingredients for nearly a decade. A-F Acquisition LLC snapped up the parcel in 2016 following the bankruptcy of its previous operator, Agri-Fine Inc., inheriting a legacy of pollution friction that state regulators trace back years.

Nausea, Sealed Windows, and Disrupted Funerals

For residents living in the shadow of the East 100th Street plant, relief came after years of physical distress. Sworn affidavits filed with the state described noxious plumes that mimicked rotten eggs, raw sewage, decomposing meat, and acrid chemical waste.

Families locked themselves inside.

According to inspection logs filed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and municipal authorities, investigators sent into the surrounding streets suffered bouts of nausea and struggled to breathe. The airborne blight reached far beyond living rooms. A neighbouring church reported that noxious waves repeatedly ruined wedding ceremonies, outdoor festivals, and funeral services, while nearby schools grappled with outdoor conditions foul enough to drive children indoors.

Fed-up residents coordinated directly with the Illinois Attorney General’s office, maintaining meticulous daily odour logs that established the plant as the single source point of the offensive emissions.

Regulatory Defiance and Illegal Equipment

The court-ordered shutdown culminates years of unchecked environmental defiance. Federal authorities had already singled out the site on March 3, 2022, when the US Environmental Protection Agency issued Pullman Innovations a formal notice of violation for breaching federal clean-air standards and state pollution codes.

Yet the company doubled down.

In January 2025, the Illinois EPA threw out an application by A-F Acquisition LLC seeking permission to erect a third industrial natural gas boiler. Regulators discovered the company had bypassed statutory clearances entirely—installing the heavy machinery before ever filing a construction permit application. A formal violation notice struck the facility on May 29, 2025, followed by state inspections in February 2025 and August 2026 that verified suffocating odours leaking across residential blocks.

A-F Acquisition LLC must now redesign its exhaust systems, bring unpermitted boilers into legal alignment, and present certified technical mitigation plans before the Cook County Circuit Court bench when proceedings reconvene on January 14, 2027.