Is human meat about to be served up instead of animal meat? No, that's not true: an English mockumentary has fooled some people into believing the TV production was real. What some call a "documentary" is actually a satirical mockumentary called "Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat" by UK broadcaster Channel 4. Gregg Wallace is a British TV chef who normally presents bonafide cooking programmes.
The claim reappeared as a video published by TikTok on August 7, 2023 by an account called "Balkan Politika i Novosti" which translates to English as "Balkans Politics and News" (archived here) with commentary translated from Serbian by Lead Stories staff provided by Serbian YouTuber Ilijan Benjak:
Yesterday I watched a documentary that, honestly, explained to me many things that I had doubted until now, and I'm just now realising how sick we really are. Not us as people but people who simply have the ability to choose what to do with sad animals and other people's lives. As you can see for yourself in the title, human meat has been legalised! What exactly does that mean for us and how does it work exactly? The documentary says that a company has opened in Great Britain that produces six tons of human meat a day! It is not some made up meat or genetic meat but meat from people, real people.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Aug 31 20:19:53 2023 UTC)
In an interview with the BBC, Tom Kingsley, the director of the mockumentary said:
Our intention wasn't to create a hoax - it was just that we felt the satire would be more powerful if it caught people by surprise. I wanted to respect the style of a mainstream TV documentary, but never thought people would believe it for more than a few minutes.
The Telegraph reported that Gregg Wallace told a British radio station:
It's gone off in directions I never anticipated like the ethical production of meat. I didn't expect people to think it was real. There were points where I found it difficult not to laugh during filming with Michel Roux. We were cooking steaks pretending they were human and discussing if we would have a better flavour in different parts of the world. It was cut but we even suggested people from Spain or Italy would have more of a garlic flavour - it was ludicrous at points we were just giggling and giggling.
The show certainly fooled people not only in the UK but around the world. Lead Stories has also debunked claims made in Bulgaria about the now-infamous show.
