Email below from a site manager : The smell in the kitchen is horrendous now. All the cupboards have been checked, the fridge is out and cleaned under regularly with bleach, the bin is fresh, the drain has been cleared with product, the roof above has been checked for signs of dead bodies or decaying food – nothing. HELP US PLEASE!! Any cost effective ideas ? p.s when they checked for dead bodies, it does not mean ex employees

Once had an employee who thought if funny to inject milk into padded chairs and stapled a dead fish to underside of wooden drawer in old style filing cabinet. It took a long time before he finally admitted what he did: took even longer before most staff spoke to him again.

The delights of "self defrosting" fridges - unfortunately any spillage seems to find its way to the drip tray intended to evaporate off the defrost water and instead cooks the materials that enter it. Seems to be worse since the advent of multi pint plastic milk containers that leak on to the shelf if laid flat - had a similar issue at a holiday rental last year with a smelly kitchen as with your experience found cooked milk in the evaporator tray having spent two days with a sickly sweet smell.

lisar - it sounds like you have an ammonia gassed fridge there that has developed a leak. Whilst not being too alarmist you might need to ensure that the employees are all checking out OK as ammonia tends to deaden the sense of smell after some exposure. As to the fridge, empty it and get it out into the open air (if it is in fact portable) if not get your fridge engineers in asap.

Vinegar works with milk (or so I'm told)

Jane One of the very first complaints I investigated as a trainee HSE Inspector was ammonia smell emanating from a (blue)print factory. Armed with my Draeger pump I went in to the print room which reeked. I was quite surprised that the ammonia in air was well within the then Threshold Limit Value (current OES is I think half). The print workers couldn't smell it. Similar with vinegar. I spent 3 months working at the long since demolished HP Sauce brewery in Aston. 3 weeks doing the convenor's job - molasses "room" - when he was on holiday that warranted an extra hour's overtime in the morning as well as the 2 hours in the evening to clean up (which 2 hours translated mostly in playing cards). The morning overtime was of course wholly unnecessary as the convenor's job could be done in about an hour a day filling each of two tanks with spirit vinegar and then adding molasses + whatever fruit juices went into the mix. Soon became inured to the smell, but my then girlfriend didn't!