Britain’s first body farm, where researchers would study decomposing human corpses to help to find bodies and catch killers, has been proposed by forensic scientists. The centre would be used to help train dogs to search for bodies.
Researchers say that there are plenty of people who would be willing to donate their bodies to help solve crimes.
The US has several such centres, officially known as taphonomy facilities, but researchers say that the British climate, soil, insects and scavenging wildlife are all quite different.
The absence of a UK centre means that scientists have had to use pigs, which have some physiological similarities to humans, to try to understand what happens to a body after death.
Anna Williams, a forensic anthropologist at Huddersfield University, told The Observer that murder cases similar to those of the missing girls April Jones and Milly Dowler could benefit from “information of the type that we will get from such centres”.
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She said: “It would have allowed us to develop improved search and location techniques for finding bodies of people who had been missing for a long time,” and one could be established by 2020.
Dr Williams is one of the scientists in discussion with the Human Tissue Authority as part of the effort to have a body farm built in the UK.
The authority said: “Our aim is to ensure that the consent of the individuals who donate their bodies would have primacy and the activities taking place would be subject to the same standards as those required in other areas of research where human tissue is used.”