‘Essentially turning up and baking human bodies into soil. We are absolutely moving in the wrong direction’
By Anthony Iafrate, Daily Caller News Foundation
The Oklahoma State House on Tuesday passed a bipartisan bill that would make it legal to use the decomposed and ground-up remains of human corpses as soil fertilizer in the state.
The legislation, HB 3660, seeks to include so-called “natural organic reduction” (NOR), a common euphemism for human composting, “as a form of cremation” under state law. Oklahoma’s lower chamber passed the bill 59-37, with both Republicans and Democrats voting in favor, prompting a harsh rebuke from one of the GOP lawmakers who opposes the legislation.
“Today the House advanced HB3660, a bill to legalize the use of composted human bodies as fertilizer. If this bill is put into law, Oklahoma joins 14 BLUE states that have legalized this process,” Republican Oklahoma State Rep. Jim Shaw wrote in a Tuesday X post. “So, instead of outlawing this type of practice outright, we’re on track to take the use of humanure as fertilizer another disgusting step forward.”