Kate Benson and Mellisa Singer, 2/5/10
Funeral directors are furious at moves to deregulate their industry, saying a catalogue of horrifying abuses, such as a decaying corpse that was put on display at a funeral this year, will escalate if rogue operators are allowed to flourish. Hundreds of operators wrote to the NSW Health Department last week after reports that a teenager’s body, which his parents paid to have embalmed, was presented rotting and maggot-infested at his funeral. In other cases being investigated, a bloodied body was hosed down in a public car wash bay at Coffs Harbour, and human remains were discarded in the council’s regular garbage collection at Blacktown.
