Question 5981 — death and death

Summary

Regulations and case law only accept two methods of burial: burial and cremation. “Humusation” or “terramation”, which consists of transforming bodies into humus, is therefore currently prohibited. Its introduction into domestic law raises significant legal, ethical and environmental questions, particularly with regard to the provisions of article 16-1-1 of the civil code. In addition, experiments carried out in European countries on the humusation process, in particular by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium in 2020, highlighted that the concrete implementation of this technique remained far below theoretical expectations (decomposition of bodies over a very long time, soil pollution by nitrates and ammonia). It therefore does not currently constitute a feasible alternative to burial methods authorized by applicable law. The National Council for Funeral Operations (CNOF), however, remains very informed on the issues, expectations and perspectives in terms of alternatives to burial and cremation and will soon relaunch its reflections, making it possible to study possible possibilities for changes to the regulations on this subject.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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