These professional “sniffers” are the noses investigating foul odor complaints in Taiwan.
Video script:
Inside a pig farm in Taiwan’s Pingtung County, the air is thick with the smell of animal waste and feed. It's an environment most people would avoid – but for a small group of professionals, it’s part of the job.
When someone reports a foul smell – most often from pig or chicken farms – the Environmental Protection Bureau collects air samples from the area and sends them in for analysis. In Pingtung, one of Taiwan’s biggest pig-farming regions, odor complaints are especially common, with 96 reported cases in 2024 alone.
That’s when these professional “sniffers” come in. Their job is to open the gas-filled sample bags and carefully sniff each one, identifying and categorizing the odors.
Becoming a sniffer isn’t easy. Candidates must have no smell impairments and pass an initial test of five distinct scents: floral, caramel, body odor, feces, and overripe fruit. Only those who can correctly identify all five can qualify, and they still have to retake the test before every assignment to ensure accuracy.
Once a sample has been collected, it must be tested within 12 hours, meaning sniffers are on call day or night, and even weekends. One sniffer, Chen Chen-hua (陳振華), explained that sometimes it can take two hours just to smell one sample.
It’s a tough job, but these professionals are crucial to maintaining air quality and responding to public concerns - one sniff at a time.