N.Y. Public Health Law § 3420: Funeral directing; license to practice required; exceptions

§ 3420. Funeral directing; license to practice required; exceptions.

1. No person shall engage in the business or practice of funeral

directing, undertaking, or embalming or transact or hold himself out as

transacting or practicing or as being entitled to transact or practice

funeral directing, undertaking or embalming in this state unless duly

licensed according to law, and registered under the provisions of this

article, except that nothing in this article contained shall prohibit

embalming:

(a) by commissioned medical officers in the armed forces of the United

States or in the United States public health service while on active

duty in the respective service; or,

(b) by any one actually serving as a member of the resident medical

staff of any legally incorporated hospital; or,

(c) by any person duly licensed to practice as a physician or surgeon

in this state.

2. A person who holds a license as a funeral director, undertaker or

embalmer, as defined herein, and is registered as required herein, shall

be entitled to practice as defined and limited by the provisions of the

law at the time the license was issued, except as otherwise provided by

this article.

3. Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, the

commissioner may in his discretion enter into an agreement with another

state of the United States or a province of the Dominion of Canada,

pursuant to which agreement any person, duly licensed and registered as

a funeral director, undertaker or the equivalent thereof by and in such

other state or province, may enter into this state for the sole purposes

of removing to such other state or province dead human bodies,

supervising the delivery to or removal from a common carrier of such

bodies, or burying, cremating, or supervising funeral services over dead

human bodies brought from such other state or province as though such

person were duly licensed and registered by and in this state except

that such person shall not maintain an establishment, advertise or hold

himself out directly or through any agent or agency or otherwise as a

funeral director, undertaker or the equivalent thereof other than in the

state or province in which he is registered and licensed.