Easy, Illustrated Instructions on How to Get Rid of a Cooler of Rotten Meat

I was recently confronted with a vexing problem. How do you get rid of a large quantity of rotting meat?

A friend's husband is a hunter, so he bags deer, fish and even bear, and brings wild meat home for eating and freezing.

Occasionally, a chunk of meat will be overlooked long enough to go bad. Too bad for eating, too bad for dogs. But, it is too big for the trash can. It is an entire cooler full of putrid meat.

What do you do with it? It stinks like hell. It is heavy. It is hard to throw away. The garbage men won't take it. This is a problem.

My father is a retired forensic scientist and he knew what to do. His advice? You bury it.

Buried meat

Soil is a very good deodorizer. One foot or even six inches of soil is an amazing deodorant. Bury the meat two feet deep, or one foot deep if the digging is tough. Six inches would probably be enough if no dogs would encounter the meat grave. The stench will be an ammonia smell. This can be somewhat neutralized by vinegar, but that probably won't be neccessary because of the soil's magical power.

Don't Do This

Don't use acid. Don't chop it up and put it down the garbage disposal. Don't flush it down the toilet. Don't set it on fire. Don't put it through the wood chipper, don't add salt. Don't add wood chips. Don't add anything. Anthing you add will just make the problem larger.

Why Burying Works

Underground, bacteria will eat the meat, consuming it completely in one year. Adding salt would slow the bacteria party.

More Information

Sulfuric acid works, but is more hazardous than most people realize.

These tips are not appropriate for hiding a person's dead body.

You can bury the whole cooler, but that's going to require a lot more digging and will preserve the meat for an extraordinary amount of time. I understand you are never going to be able to use that cooler again. Just tip the rotting meat out into the hole and spray it out with a hose. Replace dirt.

You can probably just double-bag the meat and throw it in the trash unless you have a very strict garbage service.

If Burying is Not an Option

You can absorb the smell with activated charcoal. Activated charcoal is regular charcoal which has had all of it's lightweight organic fuel baked out of it. To accomplish this, you can heat up a bunch of charcoal briquettes to about 250°F for one hour (don't heat up the bag). The will activate it, so it is able to absorb a bunch of foul odors. Re-bag the charcoal briquettes and put the bag on top of the cooler. Cover both with a tarp.

Unfortunately, you won't want to heat up charcoal in your oven at home. The baking organic compounds would make your whole house smell like chemicals.









