‘Disturbing to say the least’: State advances bill to turn dead humans into actual fertilizer

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.”

The bill is sponsored by Republican Oklahoma State Rep. Eddy Dempsey and Republican Oklahoma State Sen. Casey Murdock, both of whom are farmers representing largely rural districts. A majority of GOP representatives — 43 of 81 — voted for the bill, while 36 Republicans and only one Democrat, State Rep. Mickey Dollens, voted against it. Republican Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert notably supported the bill.

Shaw, who also represents a rural area, shared a video on social media showing his confrontation with Dempsey on the State House floor. Shaw told the DCNF that the exchange took place Tuesday morning before the vote.

“I just gotta ask, do you really believe that human remains, or even my favorite subject, human poop, are okay as compost or fertilizer? Do you really believe that?” Shaw asked the bill’s House sponsor.

“In this situation, yes,” Dempsey answered, followed by a few seconds of silence.

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Dempsey did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

“This is not a conservative policy at all, but it is being passed by a supposed conservative legislature in Oklahoma that’s really not nearly as conservative as what they claim to be,” Shaw told the DCNF in an interview. “We’re supposed to be the supermajority Republican, conservative-led legislature, both the House and the Senate. But we have very, very purple, you know, on borderline blue policies that were passing every single day.”

The 14 states that have legalized NOR include Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state, according to A Greener Funeral (AGF), a project of pro-NOR company Passages International, Inc.

All of these states are either blue or swing states that voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. If HB 3660 passes the State Senate and is signed into law by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma would be the first solidly red state to legalize NOR.

Shaw also told the DCNF that he is not sure whether Stitt would sign or veto the legislation were it to reach his desk. The governor’s office did not respond to the outlet’s request to clarify the governor’s stance on the bill.

The lawmaker also noted it’s possible the State Senate, which like the State House has a GOP supermajority, would reject the bill and render it dead on arrival.
“On the Senate side we have a stronger conservative group senators, and so it is possible, and hopefully likely, especially with the public outcry that we’re seeing on social media with this that the Senate will kill it,” he said.

Shaw told the DCNF that the debate over NOR in his home state “really kind of mimics” the debate over “the use of biosolids, or what I call ‘humanure’ as land-applied fertilizer here in Oklahoma,” a key issue which he campaigned on during his first run for the State House in 2024.

“They’ve been spreading ‘humanure’ aka biosolids on Oklahoma farmland for decades. This bill is throwing in composted human remains to be used as fertilizer,” Shaw wrote in response to an X user who commented on his post. “I’ve proposed a bill two sessions in a row to ban the application of biosolids as fertilizer in our state and it has been killed outright. This bill would take that practice to another level. It’s disturbing to say the least.”

“That’s a major issue in my area within Oklahoma,” Shaw added in his interview with the DCNF. “And I presented legislation the last two sessions in a row, and they failed every year. And so now we’re looking at this piece of legislation from Rep. Dempsey on human composting, and the majority of my colleagues in the Oklahoma House being in favor of essentially turning up and baking human bodies into soil.”

“We are absolutely moving in the wrong direction on both of those issues,” he emphasized.

Shaw added that the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement should be “100% against” both NOR and using human or biosolids as fertilizer.

NOR is “the contained, accelerated conversion of human remains to soil,” per AGF’s website. “This process uses large tanks, containers, or similar vessels to hold human remains together with straw, wood chips, and/or other natural materials for a period of time of about four to six weeks.”

“When the process is complete the family of the deceased has the opportunity to receive the soil material, which is suitable for spreading in a garden, planting a special tree, or scattering in other meaningful locations such as a garden, memorial forest, or other special place,” the website’s description of NOR adds.

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