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A staggering 40,000lbs of extra-firm tofu was spilled in an accident near a small town in Missouri and left in the open for weeks, creating a smell that local officials called “unforgettable”.

The cleanup – dubbed the “Great Battle of the Jerome Tofu Monster” – began near the town of Jerome, in south-western Missouri, on 1 March, when a tractor-trailer vehicle with a cargo of tofu crashed off a local highway and plunged into a ravine.

No one was hurt, but blocks of tofu spilled out of the trailer. The entire cargo was then left to ripen and rot for three weeks while a dispute over insurance played out and the tofu spread into a local creek. The effect was a smell that horrified local officials assigned to clean up the mess.

“While the main threat has been contained, cleanup and remediation efforts are still ongoing downstream, where runoff and debris from the incident have created what authorities are cautiously calling a ‘tofu-affected area’,” said a statement from the Doolittle rural fire protection district.

Calling the catastrophe “the Jerome Tofu Monster”, the statement added: “The creature resisted capture with surprising strength–and a smell officials described as ‘unforgettable’.”

“It was like a dead animal, but worse,” fire chief Brandon Williams told the New York Times. “It’s probably one of the worst smells I’ve smelled in my life, and I’ve smelled some nasty stuff.”

Bizarrely, the tofu incident was not the only 40,000-lb food-related traffic disaster to strike the region in recent times. Last year, the Doolittle firefighters also had to respond to a crash where a truck carrying 40,000lbs of ribeye steaks burst into flames.