Key points:
- A new California law allows human cadavers to potentially be used as garden soil in growing food for human consumption, drawing criticism from the Golden State’s Catholic bishop’s conference.
- On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 351, known as The Cemetery and Funeral Act, which establishes a framework to license and regulate a process for cemeteries and other similar facilities in which dead human bodies are converted into soil.
- Known as natural organic reduction (NOR), the approach involves placing bodies into vessels that resemble human coffins and then transforming the remains into “nutrient-dense soil,” according to Democratic Assemblymember Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, who authored the bill.
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