In view of the subjective aspects of the odor hazard, and in the absence of regulation of this hazard by way of regulations as stated above, the task of proving the existence of an odor hazard under the Prevention of Hazards Law has been identified as a complex task in case law and literature – a task at its core, naturally, is the exercise of the court's discretion (see, for example: High Court of Justice 295/65 Oppenheimer v. Minister of the Interior and Health, IsrSC 20(1) 309, 322 (1966) (hereinafter: the Oppenheimer case); Class Action (Tel Aviv District) 44000-06-12 Haddad v. Osem Investments Ltd., para. 4 [Nevo] (November 13, 2014) (the Honorable Judge Shoshana Almagor) (hereinafter: the Haddad case); Flint and Vinitsky, at pp. 495-496). In several cases, in the absence of an appropriate normative source, the courts used the "Procedure for the Definition of Odor Hazards" prepared for this purpose by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (hereinafter: the Procedure for the Definition of Odor Hazards or the Procedure) (see, in relation to the previous version of the Procedure: Class Action (Central District) 20607-04-11 Lieberman v. Moses Kfar Saba Ltd., para. 15 [Nevo] (October 30, 2014) (hereinafter: the Moses case); the Haddad case, In paragraph 4; Class Action (District Court) 52406-04-13 Gadir v. Hanson Israel Quarry Products Ltd., paragraphs 85-88 [Nevo] (April 27, 2015) (the Honorable Judge Binyamin Arbel); Class Action (Hai District) 44582-12-12 Balut v. Teva Post Ltd., paragraphs 39-40 [Nevo] (February 4, 2015) (the Honorable Judge Yigal Grill)). This procedure (which last came into effect on December 13, 2022) defines a "strong or unreasonable odor" as follows: "A strong odor is an odor of absolute high intensity; An unreasonable smell is an odor that causes the hazard in view of the circumstances" (section 4 of the procedure); Subsequently, he proposes a methodology for identifying an odor hazard:
The determination that there is an odor hazard will be made according to the professional opinion of the Odor Supervisor [an employee of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the field of air pollution prevention who has undergone training in the subject of odor detection]. His opinion will take into account the location of the smell, its intensity, its character, its hedonic tone, the frequency of the smell gusts, and meteorological and topographical conditions (ibid.).