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The Dutch parliament is working on a draft law allowing the chemical dissolution of corpses. The resulting liquid will then be used to fertilize fields and produce biogas. These measures have attracted particular support from the funeral industry, which counts on further increasing its profits while reducing costs.

According to current regulations, in the Netherlands, the bodies of the dead can be buried, cremated or donated to science. There are also extreme conditions that allow the scaterring of one's ashes or burial at sea. The "new methods" of funerals have caused, however, the center-right government of Mark Rutte begun to work on legalizing the next possibility of disposing of corpses.

The Netherlands would like to allow the chemical dissolution of the bodies of the dead. As a result of alkaline hydrolysis, only bones and fluid are left from the dead body. Bones are converted to lime phosphate throughout the process, so they can be crushed and the powder put in an urn.

In the justification of the new law, it is also mentioned that it has other applications. You can use the product of the dead bodies to fertilize fields or produce biogas. The so-called experts consider the above method to be environmentally friendly, while the funeral services industry is rubbing its hands at the possibility of increasing its revenue. A similar method has, however, been introduced in Australia, Canada, and some US states.
 
Human corpses just arn't really a practical resource. They're more of a storage problem than an untapped resource, all of the weird alternative funerals are just kind of a fad thing.
the only one I can get behind other than cremation is a shroud burial since it (probably, if you're not cremated embalmed) allows you to break down into just bones instead of a pile of bones and goop inside of a nice box.
 
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"Eat the bugs goy" and other epic memes are a non-argument that always seems to get brought up when things like this are discussed. If you posted an article about why we should be using urine as a fertilizer you'd probably hear it here even though that's something people have been doing for as long as farming has been around.

That being said, there are some actual good arguments against this practice. The potential for creating prion disease through this is very high. Mad cow disease was created because of people putting cow bones into cow feed as a supplement, and the constant recycling of proteins through that route eventually caused prion diseases to spread throughout their food. You'd have to be very careful to make sure that you don't end up with a similar thing here when you spray your food for humans with human bones.

Additionally there's also the problem that there's just not that many corpses out there. When you compare how many tons of crops we make versus how many tons of corpses we make in the same time, it becomes a trifle. If you have a fertilizer problem, human corpses aren't going to be the solution to that problem, they'd at most be a very, very small part of it.
 
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Anyone else a little uneasy with the funeral industry being so eager to increase profits? I mean, I'm a free market kind of guy, but it just rubs me the wrong way when undertakers are saying they need more... business.
It kind of makes sense? People nowadays cling to life for 80 years at least.
 
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As long as it's entirely voluntary and the explicit wishes of the deceased (or the next of kin if they had no final will) then I suppose it's fine, but I'd be lying if I said that last bit about the funeral service industry rubbing it's hands in anticipation of more business isn't a little worrying to me.
Oh, the funeral industry isn't the only one rubbing its hands in anticipation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1115.Body_Brokers
 
Fair enough. I would probably describe him as a neoliberal/libertarian (pedophile adjacent) type, but I wouldn't editorialize when posting an article.

Don't defend, it's the article I'm criticizing, not you.

Nothing about his policy is liberal or libertarian. Groenlinks hasn't even ruled for a long time, but he keeps passing everything they want.
 
Thats a good way for poor people... better than an unmarked grave on the taxpayers dime...
 
How would they handle fillings in teeth, plastic joint replacements and silicon boob enhancements? Is it okay for that to go into the soil? :\
Are you implying that people aren´t born with those?
They´ll most likely get removed and incase of gold fillings/boob enhancements given to the next of kin or pocketed.

That article better not imply that you must earn the $$$ to be buried or face chemical dissolution.
It´s not like you can trust your family to not take the cheapest option (wooden tombstone and seperate from your family)
 
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