New York General Business Law Section 750-A - Definitions.

750-a. Definitions. As used in this article, unless the context requires otherwise:

1. "Person" means an individual, corporation, company, partnership, municipality, not-for-profit corporation or any other entity whatsoever.

2. "Licensee" means a person as herein defined licensed to engage in the business of operating a pet cemetery or pet crematorium under this article.

3. "To engage for a fee in the business of operating a pet cemetery or pet crematorium" means and refers to a person who holds himself or herself out directly or indirectly, as being able, or who offers or undertakes, by any means or method, to dispose of pet remains by earth burial, entombment, inurnment, cremation or other means.

4. "License fee" and "renewal fee" mean the fees required to accompany an application for issuance of any license, including any temporary, apprentice or renewal license, pursuant to this article. Such fee shall be non-refundable.

5. "Pet cemetery" means any land, place, structure, facility or building provided by any person for a fee, whether or not for profit, to veterinarians or members of the general public for use, or reservation for use, for the permanent interment or inurnment above or below ground of pet remains. Provided, however, this definition shall not apply to:

(a) rendering plants licensed pursuant to article five-C of the agriculture and markets law, or

(b) a landfill or other disposal facility at which solid waste, or its residue after treatment, is intentionally placed and at which, solid waste shall remain indefinitely.

6. "Pet crematorium" means any land, place, structure, facility or building provided by any person for a fee, whether or not for profit, to veterinarians or members of the general public for the cremation of pets. However, a pet crematorium shall not provide for permanent interment or inurnment of pet remains. Provided, however, this definition shall not apply to facilities designed for resource recovery as defined in section 27-0701 of the environmental conservation law. Provided further, that it shall not include any disposal facility regulated under title fifteen of article twenty-seven of the environmental conservation law that is primarily engaged in incineration of medical waste.

7. "Pet" means any domestic animal that has been adapted or tamed to live in intimate association with people but is not limited to, dogs, cats, rodents, fish, birds, snakes, turtles, lizards, frogs and rabbits.

8. "Pet owner" means the person who is listed as the owner of the pet in veterinary records or pet cemetery or crematorium records or his or her agent or employee. In the event that such pet owner is a minor then a parent or legal guardian or his or her agent or employee shall be deemed the pet owner for the purposes of the pet disposal form required in section seven hundred fifty-s of this article.

9. "Individual burial" means the interment of a single pet's remains in a separate grave. However, nothing in this section shall prevent the interment of more than one pet in a grave with the written consent of the pet owner.

10. "Mass burial" means the interment of pet remains communally in a grave containing more than one pet.

11. "Individual cremation" means the cremation of a single pet's remains in a separate receptacle that allows the pet's cremains to remain separate from the cremains of other pets.

12. "Mass cremation" means the cremation of pets communally in a receptacle containing more than one pet.

13. "Veterinarian" means a person licensed to practice the profession of veterinary medicine as defined by section sixty-seven hundred one of the education law.

14. "Entombment" means the placement of a pet in a grave or tomb.

15. "Inurnment" means the placement of pet cremains in a grave, urn or tomb.

16. "Land used in agricultural production" means such lands as defined in subdivision four of section three hundred one of the agriculture and markets law.


Last modified: February 3, 2019