Is cannibalism legal?
It depends where you are in the world and why you are doing it—but it may shock you to discover what is permissible in your own backyard—or dining table.
According to the Canadian Criminal Code Section 182, a person who "improperly or indecently interferes with or offers any indignity to a dead human body or human remains, whether buried or not" is guilty of an indictable offence with a prison sentence of up to five years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
If an individual commits a crime before consuming the flesh of the deceased person, that crime warrants a considerably more severe sentence, of course.
But it may surprise you to find out that eating human flesh isn't always illegal under federal law.
When it comes to cannibalism, context matters. Vancouver criminal lawyer Kyla Lee told Vancouver Is Awesome that it isn't always an offence.
"The question is whether someone improperly or indecently interferes with the remains," she explained.
If someone is stranded in the wilderness and their travel companion perishes and they eat them to stay alive then they would not necessarily be committing a criminal offence, Lee illustrated.
"There may be provincial statutes that prohibit this—as many provinces have rules around what you have to do if you find a dead body, so there definitely isn't carte blanche to just, um, go to lunch," she added.
"But most of the provincial laws around human tissue laws deal only with organ transplants (the BC Human Tissue Act does not apply to flesh, just organs) or funeral services."
In criminal law cases, however, duress or necessity are also defences, Lee explained. "A criminal act involving an indignity to a body may also be excused if there was a life or death situation that gave you no reasonable legal alternative but to eat your friend."
Additionally, someone could be excused for consuming human flesh if they were forced to eat it under some sort of threat of death or serious bodily injury.
And shockingly, Lee noted, there is no criminal prohibition on eating yourself or eating a part of your friend or family member that has been removed. In other words, if you lost an appendage or limb due to injury, there's no law against you or your pals chowing down on the flesh.
"You probably cannot give lawful consent for something to be removed by another individual for the purpose of cannibalism though," she said. "At least not any significant part that would leave you with a grievous bodily injury."
BC Women’s hospital outlines safe ways for women to take their placenta home if they choose—but they are urged not to eat their placentas in any form.
Canada isn't the only country that has a bit of a grey area when it comes to the consumption of human flesh. In fact, several countries around the world do not have laws directly against cannibalism. However, murder or injury to another person for the purpose of eating them is still considered a crime.
In Germany, cannibalism is not illegal, but Cornell Law School highlights a case where a man found an individual on a fetish website who consented to be killed and consumed. While the individual consented, the man was convicted of murder.
