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If you’re trying to eat as you read this, do yourself a favor: Put either the food or the newspaper down. It's about to get seriously gruesome.

The Tri-State Crematorium in Noble, Ga., was discovered last week to be no crematorium at all. Instead, it was a dead-body farm, where allegedly cremated corpses had been rotting for years. Customers who had been assured that a loved one’s ashes were in the urns learned that their “ashes” were actually nothing more than potting soil or cement.

What a pleasant surprise for a person to find about their grandmother’s body.

The operator of the Tri-State Crematorium, Brent Marsh, had an excuse, supposedly. He claimed his cremator was broken and he couldn’t do anything about it.

For 10 years. Gee, that’s a well thought out excuse.

Some of the recently exhumed corpses have been found to be over a decade old, and more are on the way. Two hundred bodies and counting have been discovered, and the search is far from over.

Georgia’s case has awakened Alabama's citizens — and legislature — to a problem with our existing regulations. Funeral homes are licensed and overseen by the state governments in both states, but crematories operate without any sort of regulation.

Technically, they’re supposed to be covered under funeral home rules, but freestanding crematories, such as Tri-State, are subject to no oversight because they aren't attached to a home.

It’s a loophole that the Legislature would be wise to close.

Before Marsh’s crematory illustrated exactly why it was needed, Rep. Terry Spicer (D-Elba) and Sen. Harri Ann Smith (R-Slocumb) proposed a crematory licensing bill that would bring facilities like Tri-State operating in Alabama under similar rules and regulations to those governing funeral homes. Under Spicer and Smith’s bill, crematories would be licensed and inspected, while bodies going into and out of the buildings would be more stringently accounted for.

The Legislature should, and probably will, pass this law. It’s sad that nothing can be done for the families victimized by Tri-State already, but the new legislation could hopefully go a long way toward preventing future funeral tragedies.

This editorial comes from The Crimson White at the University of Alabama. This column was distributed by U-Wire.

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