Gregg Wallace’s satirical doc on ‘edible human meat’ shared as real

A clip from a satirical programme in which former Masterchef presenter Gregg Wallace supposedly visits a factory manufacturing edible human flesh is circulating on social media as if it’s real.

One post sharing the clip has almost 3,000 shares, and comments including: “Sounds to me like a cover up story for when people find human DNA in the food” and “Honestly, unwilling cannibalism”.

The clip has overlaid text saying “It’s not beef, it’s human”, and the caption says: “Lab-grown meat wasn’t dystopian enough, so now they’re casually tossing around the idea of cultivated human cells as the next ‘ethical’ food trend. Not satire. Not science fiction. This is real.”

In the clip, a man shows Mr Wallace a “nutrient vat” containing “thin slices of tissue” that he says produce a “cake” of human flesh in 24 hours, that can then be processed into steaks, sausages and burgers.

The man explains that the company can “harvest people and pay them for their flesh” because of less regulation following Brexit, and that human meat is preferable over animal meat because “centuries of knowledge of human medicine” means we can engineer “structured flavours” for the flesh.

However, this clip is not part of a real documentary showing a genuine factory.

It is from a satirical programme called ‘Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat’ that was released in 2023. The show was inspired by a 1729 satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, that suggested poor people in Ireland should sell their children as food to the rich. The essay is referenced at the end of the programme when Mr Wallace says “it’s a modest proposal, but it might be the only attempt we’ve seen to take the great British cost-of-living crisis seriously”.

The programme’s director said at the time that it was intended to “satirise the way that the misery of the cost of living has become normalised.”

He added that he “never thought people would believe it for more than a few minutes”.

Although some claims we check seem very obviously fake or satirical, it’s not always clear to everyone that this is the case. Our blog explains more about why we still fact check this kind of post.

This is not the first time we’ve seen satirical content being shared as if it was genuine, including a fake Daily Mail article about a mural of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resembling Hitler and a viral video of a woman claiming her 14-month-old baby is transgender.

It’s important to consider the source of claims before sharing them online. Our toolkit gives you advice on how to navigate information you see online.