Chopped wrote on 04/13/11 at 17:12:09:With all the preservatives in our food.... I don't think anyone is biodegradable anymore!
Nonbiodegradable and contaminated -- even the vultures can't eat us!
(The Parsi are a minority culture in India who dispose of their late relatives by leaving them in the "Towers of Silence". The griffon vultures make short work of the soft parts. Or at least they used to...)
From Wikipedia:
In the past several decades, the population of birds of prey on the Indian subcontinent has declined by 99.9% (as of 2008) primarily due to diclofenac poisoning of the birds following the introduction of that drug for livestock in the 1990s[5] (diclofenac for cattle was banned by the Indian government in 2006). The few surviving birds are often unable to fully consume the bodies.[6] Parsi communities in India are currently evaluating captive breeding of vultures and the use of "solar concentrators" (which are essentially large mirrors) to accelerate decomposition.[7] Some have been forced to resort to burial, as the solar collectors work only in clear weather. Vultures formerly disposed of a body in minutes, and no other method has proved fully effective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
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