At the end of July 2023, a video gained popularity on the Internet, which talks about the technology for preparing human meat, allegedly developed in the UK. We found out if this is true.

The video looks like an advertisement and talks about the Good Harvest company, which allegedly invented the technology for producing meat from human cells. The man in the frame says that this meat, “made from people for people,” is tastier and cheaper than what is now sold in stores. Users who shared the video often accompany with the following description: “MasterChef reality TV cooking show judge GregG Wallace praises "amazing human meat" on Britain's main channel, Channel 4. "In the laboratory, human tissue is transformed into larger pieces of meat that can be used to make steaks, burgers and sausages." Publications with such text, in particular, were shared on Telegram by the publicist Nikolay Starikov (33,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), political scientist Alexander Semchenko (95,000), channel "Lost past"(134,000) and many others. The plot also attracted the interest of social network users (“VKontakte», "Odnoklassniki», Facebook) and continues to spread to this day.

On July 24, 2023, a new “documentary” from the host of the MasterChef show called “Gregg Wallace: Britain's Wonder Meat” was indeed released on the British Channel 4. Description of the film, the network's official website reads: "With soaring food prices, Gregg Wallace is exploring a controversial new lab-grown meat product that its makers claim could provide a solution to the cost of living crisis."

However, in fact, the genre of the show in question is a mockumentary (pseudo-documentary film), on IMDb it attributed to comedies. The script for the film was created by writer Matt Edmonds based on the satirical essay “A modest proposal» Jonathan Swift, published back in 1729. At that time in Ireland raged hunger, and Swift (who wisely did not sign his own name) argued in his text that the solution to the problem would be to eat babies. In the film, Wallace visits the plant of the fictional company Good Harvest, a pioneer in the field of human meat production technology. This very meat is designed to solve the issues of the food crisis and the high cost of living: it can be produced from pieces of flesh of other people who, for money, can become a kind of donor. In one of the most shocking scenes, they say that the most delicious meat is the meat of children under seven years old, and Wallace is offered to try “children's tartare.”

According to the authors, this mockumentary parody should raise awareness about cost of living crisis and the lengths people are willing to go to keep their families out of poverty. However, how writes Independent publication, Channel 4 viewers were very puzzled by the film by Wallace and Edmonds; many did not immediately understand that they were dealing with satire, and when they understood, they did not appreciate the humor. So, food critic Jay Rayner wrote, that it was “a two-minute sixth-grade sketch spread out over 30 minutes.” One of the editors of The Guardian, Steve Rose, on the contrary, expressed admiration for Wallace's satire.

In the Russian segment of Telegram video horrible July 27 and was initially accompanied by credible descriptions - it was mentioned that the Wallace video shown on Channel 4 was satirical. But later that day they appeared statements, that on British television in this way “they are simply introducing the ‘norm of the near future’ through satire,” and the final form of the plot purchased On July 28, in a post from the “Coincidence” channel (44,000 views) and in this version it went viral.

It is curious that the video itself, which was distributed on Telegram, is not a fragment of a Channel 4 broadcast; it was edited by the Independent for an article about the British reaction to Wallace’s film. The creators of the video even provided it with captions telling what exactly this pseudo-advertisement is. However, Russian-speaking users ignored the disclaimer.

Thus, the satirical film by Gregg Wallace, which caused controversial reviews, even in the UK, was accepted by some viewers and Internet users at face value, and in the Russian-language segment of the Internet the video was distributed out of context and presented as a “shocking truth.”

Cover photo: still frame from the video