There are traditionally two options for what to do with a body after death: burial or cremation.
Assembly Bill 351, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday, will allow residents to choose human composting, or natural organic reduction (NOR), after death starting in 2027.
The process of composting a cadaver, already legalized in Washington, Colorado and Oregon, involves placing the body in a reusable container, surrounding it with wood chips and aerating it to let microbes and bacteria grow. After about a month, the remains will decompose and be fully transformed into soil. Companies such as Recompose in Washington offer the service at a natural organic reduction facility.
During the early depths of the coronavirus pandemic, when funeral homes were inundated, Los Angeles County suspended regulations on cremation emissions. The author of the bill, Democratic Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, says the threat of climate change motivated the new law.
“AB 351 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial,” said Garcia in a statement. “With climate change and sea-level rise as very real threats to our environment, this is an alternative method of final disposition that won’t contribute emissions into our atmosphere.”
Garcia added that she herself may choose the method when she passes away. “I look forward to continuing my legacy to fight for clean air by using my reduced remains to plant a tree,” she wrote.
The idea of composting human remains has raised some ethical questions. Colorado’s version of the law dictates that the soil of multiple people cannot be combined without consent, the soil cannot be sold and it cannot be used to grow food for human consumption. The California bill bans the combining of multiple peoples’ remains, unless they are family, but unlike Colorado, California is not explicitly banning the sale of the soil or its use growing food for human consumption.
The process has met opposition in California from the Catholic Church, which say the process “reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity.”
“NOR uses essentially the same process as a home gardening composting system,” the executive director of the California Catholic Conference, Kathleen Domingo, said in a statement shared with SFGate. She added that the process was developed for livestock, not humans.
“These methods of disposal were used to lessen the possibility of disease being transmitted by the dead carcass,” she said. “Using these same methods for the ‘transformation’ of human remains can create an unfortunate spiritual, emotional and psychological distancing from the deceased.”
The executive director of the archdiocese of San Francisco, Peter Marlow, told SFGate that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone opposes the law, and stands by the position of the California Catholic Conference.
Newsom signed the bill without comment.
The above comes from a Sept. 19 story in SFGate.
Will our Catholic ruler be promoting Soylent Green next?
Any-twosome Gruesome Newsom will now leave another legacy, Grewsome Newsom.
Will any Catholic bishop speak with him privately and then address his massive, public evil publicly? Please.
Trees are nice, but babies are worth infinitely more.
Newsom has no brains, no morals, no respect for God nor for human beings. He claims to be a “Catholic,” like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. He has had ongoing problems with alleged extramarital affairs with staffers, through two marriages, and drug problems. He also administered assisted suicide pills to his mother, when she was dying of breast cancer. He claims he is dyslexic and has PTSD– and had a stormy relationship with his mother.
i don’t think mulch of this decision
It’s certainly a grave affair, isn’t it.
The idea sounds a little degrading at first, but then it starts to grow on you
Actually, lots of things will grow on you.
Soon they will just kill us, “for the good of the planet”.
When one starts down that road of treating a deceased person like composting trash, respect for life diminishes too. It’s inevitable. We already treat aborted babies like trash, and in some cases even live babies, so this is the next step. Recently, I read a blurb about it’s OK to eat human flesh. This jogged my memory of the 1972 December chartered aircraft crash in the Andes that was carrying a Uruguayan rugby team, family and friends. They were lost for 72 days before being found and had to eat the dead to stay alive, as depicted in the book entitled “Alive”.
how is it that the CO2 and methane (CH4)
released by human composting is somehow
good for the planet while the CO2 and methane
(main constituent of natural gas) in other, more
traditional uses of fossil fuel, gonna kill us all?
follow the science? or follow Gavin’s seance?
Let Gavin be the first to leap upon the compost heap.
There’s a long line of volunteers to cover him up w/ more compost.
You have me rolling on the floor laughing, but it is so true. Just call it Gavin Garbage.
After threatening to kidnap children and have them mutilated by so-called sex changer operations, Newsom is fortunate that some irate parent or adult mutilated by such childhood procedures has not shot him stone-cold dead.
Mortal Coil to Topsoil.
Memo to Tim Burr:
if you’re not already in it, you should
go into advertising.
Composting humans. The Catholic Popes are to blame who have allowed Catholics to be cremated over the years. Cremation is pagan.
Catholics need to be reminded that their bodies are sacred. Do not allow you or your loved ones to be burned.
History of the Church and cremation: https://www.traditioninaction.org/Questions/F011_Cremation.html
“Paul VI’s innovation was generally considered to be a concession made to Freemasonry – among other enemies – that characterized the so-called Conciliar Revolution.”
“On December 8, 1869, the International Congress of Freemasons imposed it as a duty on all its members to do all in their power to wipe out Catholicity from the face of the earth. Cremation was proposed as a suitable means to this end, since it was calculated to gradually undermine the faith of the people in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” (Fr. John Laux, Catholic Morality (Imprimatur 1932 p. 106).
Poor source.
Catholic Church opposes composting human remains.
Canon law 1176 §3. The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.
Nina Rhea, on June 6 1964 the New York Times had an article on this:
Pope Paul VI has approved new regulations ending severe penalties on Roman Catholics who choose cremation for themselves or others, according to Vatican sources.
Without approving cremation or altering the church’s preference for burial of the dead, the new document, sent to Catholic bishops by the Holy Office, states that those who choose cremation no longer will be proclaimed “public sinners” and denied the sacraments…
The document, it was reported, explained that the severe canonical penalties for cremation were imposed in 1886 in reaction to aggressive 19th century antireligious movements. These were said to have made cremation a symbol of positive rejection of belief in the Catholic doctrine of resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgement.
I’ll bet Gavin’s at the French Laundry
right now, offering a “Toast to Compost.”
to the tune of a multi-thousand dollar liquor bill.
When this sob returns to the old sod, I’ll
toast him with a bottle of Far Niente Cab.
But only after I strain it thru my kidneys first.