4-1-14 body farm

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A northeastern Wisconsin technical college is planning to set up a so-called body farm to help forensic researchers study cold-weather decomposition.   Fox Valley Technical College's farm will be an outdoor research facility where forensic scientists will place animal carcasses and donated human corpses in multiple settings — in the open air, in shallow graves or in sleeping bags — to study how the bodies deteriorate and how scavengers pick them apart.  Joe LeFevre is chairman of FVTC's Forensic Science Department. He says researchers might conduct experiments on how subzero temperatures mummify body tissue, whether insects inside the body can tolerate freezing and whether scavengers lose interest in frozen bodies.