There have been seven other body farms created in the United States since the first one was established in Tennessee in 1981. All are run by universities. In addition to the one in Tennessee, there are two in Texas and one each in Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Illinois. Similar facilities have also been established in Australia, India, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
In a body farm, donated corpses are left to rot in a variety of controlled conditions, and the rate and circumstances of each decomposing body provides baseline data for homicide investigations. The farms are also used for training homicide investigators and carrion-detecting dogs.
The body farm in Illinois, located near Carbondale and run by Southern Illinois University, uses both pig and human remains in its studies. It has achieved significantly different results from some of its sister farms, due to the region's lower temperatures. low elevation, highly acidic soil, high average wind speed, and poor soil drainage. This farm is also investigating what effects various postmortem treatment of the corpses (consistent with what a murderer might do) have on the remains.
There are currently 1,300 persons who are on the list to donate their bodies (once they are no longer using them) to the Tennessee facility.
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