Venue Changed for 'Body Farm' Public Meeting

Residents who want to learn more about a proposal to build a “body farm” in Lithia will get their chance this Thursday. The location for the public meeting, however, has changed.

The meeting will now be staged in the Pinecrest Elementary School cafeteria, 7950 Lithia-Pinecrest Road, at 6:30 p.m. Initial plans called for staging the informational meeting at the University of South Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Wimauma.

The “body farm” proposal is being floated by the USF and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. Technically named the Facility for Outdoor Experiment Research and Training, or FORT for short, the program would provide a place for forensic science research and training.

The research facility would sit on 2 acres of county owned and controlled land at the Walter C. Heinrich Practical Training Center in Lithia. Bodies for the farm would come from USF’s After Life Body Donation Program to advance research in forensic anthropology and legal medicine, the county explained in a media release. The cadavers “planted” on the farm would be left exposed to the elements so they can be studied by researchers and law enforcement.

See Also:

• Body Farm Proposal Taking Root in Florida
• ‘John Doe Sand Key’ Identified 24 Years Later
• New York Jane Doe Identified as Florida Teen Missing Since the 1970s

Outdoor facilities such as the one being pitched for Lithia are designed to help researchers and law enforcement better understand the changes in human remains that occur under different conditions. The county states the objectives for the facility are:

• To enable research in areas of forensic medicine, anthropology and physical sciences
• To provide a training location for outdoor crime scene methods involving human remains
• To enable the documentation and study of changes in human remains

“The forensic and scientific research conducted at the FORT would include performing simulated case studies for the medical and legal community, allowing graduate students to conduct independent studies relating to their research and offering advanced training to law enforcement throughout the state on how to process outdoor crime scenes involving human victims,” the county explained.

While similar programs are operating in states such as Colorado, Illinois, Maine and Texas, there is no similar research facility in subtropical Florida, where outdoor conditions can have dramatically different effects on human remains.

Dr. Erin Kimmerle, an associate professor of anthropology at USF, said having a facility in the Bay area is important because decomposition varies based on temperature, humidity, regional insects, water and other factors that set Florida apart from states where similar facilities are already in operation, the Tampa Bay Times quoted her as saying.

The facility is also hoped to help Bay area law enforcement and forensics experts better identify human remains to close the books cases involving missing people.

It is unclear at this time how soon the facility would become operational if it’s approved.

Residents can learn more about the plan and Thursday’s meeting by visiting the county’s website.

Image via Shutterstock

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