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For the purposes of a research project for the Flemish authorities, olfactometric measurements were carried out at six closed pig farms and six fattener farms. The results of these olfactometric measurements were compared with the olfactometric results of n-butanol samples and samples of a synthetic gas mixture of ethanethiol, methylacetate and 2-propanol in nitrogen, both analysed on the same days as the air samples from the pig farms. The results of the n-butanol tests for all panellists showed that nobody was qualified according to the CEN criteria, and that, consequently, these criteria are rather stringent. Comparing the variability of the results for the three different odours showed that the mean and standard deviation of the mean variance were not significantly different for the three odour types, which means that the repeatability of the panellist results was equal for the examined odour types. The principle of traceability was checked by comparing the variance of the n-butanol, pig odour and synthetic mixture ratio. For the complete dataset, the principle of traceability could not been proven for n-butanol. For the restricted dataset, the principle of traceability was more valid for n-butanol than for the mixture, but differences were small. Finally, normalization was looked for with regard to olfactometric measurements of air samples from pig arms based either on n-butanol or on the synthetic mixture. Both models had low determination coefficients, but the model based on the synthetic mixture gave better results than the one based on n-butanol.

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