I think it depends entirely on the integrity of the cremator. I have a good friend who does pet cremations. He cremated one of my pets and told me that he had a hell of a hard time getting the bag of ashes into the box I gave him. I laughed and asked him why he didn’t just pour some out so the bag would fit more easily. Who would know? Who would care if there were a few grams missing? Especially if the reason was that the client-provided box was too small. But he was genuinely shocked and said he would never do that.
That’s surprising to hear, because I heard that pet cremation services generally cremate multiple pets at once and give you some random ashes. That’s why we buried our dogs instead of having them cremated.
This is how it was done where I worked. If you asked for ashes, we just went and scooped out an appropriate amount of ash.
Sometimes the animal was still just sitting in the burn pile (we only burned on certain days). Also the ‘cremation’ furnace was just a modified 50gal drum. So you had to cut up any of the larger dogs. Small animals (kittens or anything smaller than a regular sized cat) we just threw in the dumpster.
As you can imagine, that job sucked.
Gosh that is fucking awful!
Radiate the body before sending it to the crematory. That way you can test radiation levels when you get your urn back.
Isotopic tagging. Nice.
You can tell by the taste
I love how so many of us came here to say this
Cremation doesn’t burn everything to ash. Pieces of bone are left intact and must be mechanically pulverized to make the remains a powder.
When my dad’s dog was cremated many years ago, the remains they gave us were partially ash, but the larger pieces hadn’t been pulverized. It still had many intact pieces of bone. We could see evidence of some injuries and degenerative disease the dog had experienced in his hip and spine.
I’m not sure how many people would be down for rooting through their pet’s remains for proof that it is the right animal.
Equally relevant, how much of the ashes are filler? Incinerated human remains do not take up a whole lot of space, and some places will fill it out with wood ash.
You get a stone with a number carved in it beforehand. You put the stone with the deceased body. Afterwards that stone is in the urn.
Edit: bonus fact, if the person was heavy, their ashes will be too.
How’s that going to help when they burn multiple corpses at the same time?
it lets you know they lied about what ashes you got
Because nobody could ever put the stone with some random ashes?
Unless the cremator knows about this stone, that wouldn’t happen
Of course they know about it.
How? Just because you get the right token back doesn’t mean you got ashes from the body you asked them to cremate. They could be from any body in the oven with them.
Well I don’t think they do cremations in groups like that. If they do then yeah there is no way to know who’s ashes, but I would also say theres no way to prove they aren’t and really in the end its all just carbon.
It doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t even really need a bag of ashes back. The memories are important.
I’m set up for my body to got the University because that’s the cheapest way to dispose of a body. They tell you that your family can get ashes back but they all get mixed together.
They don’t do that in my country.
You have to cremate them yourself. Sorry.
If possible, wait until after they die
You can’t make sure.
You can only trust in logic: why would the crematorium mix them up? It makes no advantage for them, but some risk in case the public finds out.
Not talking about just mixing them up. But what if one person goes home and gets ashes out of a fire place then sell them to you as a deceased loved one?
sell them to you
I am not paranoid enough to imagine such a thing.
What incentive would they have to do that? They need to burn the body anyways to dispose of it; using other ashes would literally be more work. Also there’s a pretty big difference between corpse ash and wood ash. They are going to be giving you the ashes of a burned body, there is no logical reason for them to deliberately give you someone elses ashes.
Basically, you can’t be sure. More of a problem with pets. When I had a pet cremated, they sent a video of the entire process up to and including them putting the ashes into the container. I was kind of like wtf? And they said I didn’t have to watch it, and they were happy to not give me the video, but that people were often concerned about just getting random ashes and that it was apparently common for some places to just cremate multiple pets and then dole out ashes to various containers, so they started videoing the entire process for each person so they could be assured they were getting their own pets ashes.
Seemed a little overboard to me, but I also didn’t realize it was happening so often.
There are much more stringent policies in place for human cremation, including the use of identification disks that don’t burn, etc. But, frankly, if someone wanted to, you could still end up with different or mixed remains, but I don’t really see that being likely for human remains.
Taste test
Why are you keeping dead bodies in your house, ashes or not.
“These other guys did it,”
Honestly…my pet Oreo died while I was away and my mom got him cremated and I just brought it up the other night asking how can we tell if it is his ashes. No dead bodies in the apartment I am at
Sorry for your loss mate.
Pretty sure there’s going to be tight controls and a state licensing board (at least in the US can’t speak for other countries) that set standards and codes for the handling of remains to when they are returned to the family.
Yeah just checked for the state I’m in lots of licenses and regulations. But I guess there’s nothing stopping in unscrupulous funeral home from just giving ashes of anyone or anything, but pretty sure if you’re caught doing something like that you go to prison for fraud and miss handling of human remains.
Pretty sure there’s going to be tight controls and a state licensing board (at least in the US can’t speak for other countries) that set standards and codes
HA! That’s a rarity.
