Preserved in alcohol, they made a wonderful canape. He was hoping that I would make a pair of earrings out of them. I was given a bottle of preserved human tonsils by a friend of mine in London. These were then placed on a female mannequin in yet another “lovely” example of modern art at its finest. Before his cannibalistic endeavors, he was probably most famous for taking a couple human fetuses and making earrings out of them. Enter Canadian performance artist Rick Gibson. While this might sound like a fantastical example, in fact, something like this has actually happened. On top of this, in cases where the flesh is somehow obtained legally, a cannibal can be charged for crimes ranging from “outraging public decency” to “preventing a lawful burial”, giving the law a number of avenues to prosecute cannibals in this regard.Īll that said, if a person was mindful of all these laws and managed to obtain some human flesh legally, they could quite literally eat said flesh in front of a cop, all while wearing a sandwich board advertising the fact that they’re a cannibal and suffer no legal consequences. The same can be said for the many other countries in which cannibalism isn’t directly illegal.įor example, in much of the world desecrating a corpse is a crime.
However, as Cornell Law School notes, a number of laws are in place across America “ that indirectly make it impossible to legally obtain and consume the body matter”. To begin with, cannibalism is absolutely legal in the United States (with the exception of the state of Idaho), the UK, much of Europe, Japan, etc.
Gina K asks: When people have to resort to cannibalism to survive, is it considered a crime?