Video shows footage from satirical TV program, not UK human meat factory | Fact check
The claim: Video shows British facility producing edible human meat
A Nov. 2 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a TikTok video of a woman becoming increasingly disgusted as a supposed documentary plays behind her.
“Britain Now Feeding The Uk Population with Human Meat,” reads text superimposed on the video.
It was shared more than 3,000 times in a week.
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Our rating: False
The clip the woman is reacting to was taken from a British spoof documentary. A spokesperson for the network that originally aired it confirmed it is satire.
Viral clip is from mockumentary
The TikTok video includes seven minutes of what appears to be a documentary showing the inner workings of a factory where supposed lab-grown human meat is processed and packaged as food.
But it’s not real. It was taken from the mockumentary “Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat” that aired in July by British broadcaster Channel 4 – the same network that decades earlier was the home of Sacha Baron Cohen characters Ali G and Borat.
Fact check: 'Lab-grown' meat made with animal cells, not human cells
The video is “entirely satirical,” network spokesperson Rachel Gordon told USA TODAY in an email.
It purports to give an inside look into the Good Harvest facility in Lincolnshire, England, where supposed samples of human flesh are grown into steaks and other edible meat products. It outlines how the company supposedly encourages people needing money to donate their bodily tissue and “and get paid within the week.” It also shows Wallace and a London chef eating those supposed human steaks.
The full video reveals itself as a hoax at its conclusion and in the credits, where it references Jonathan Swift's satirical essay, "A Modest Proposal," according to the Independent. However, that revelation is not included in the TikTok video. The complete 23-minute mockumentary is not available to viewers in the U.S.
In his 1729 essay, Swift satirically suggested the poor of Ireland eat their children to alleviate their poverty.
The point of the mockumentary is to satirize the high costs of food and other essentials faced by people in the U.K. and around the globe, Gordon said.
But because that context does not appear in the TikTok video, it is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where content produced and presented as satire originally is then captured and reposted in a way that makes it appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.
The TikTok video also includes the false claim that hamburgers from McDonald’s contain human meat – a claim USA TODAY previously debunked.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the video but did not immediately receive a response.
Reuters also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources:
Rachel Gordon, Nov. 7, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Channel 4, accessed Nov. 9, Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat
Project Gutenberg, Oct. 17, 2019, A Modest Proposal
Independent, July 25, Gregg Wallace jokes he really enjoyed his first acting job in Channel 4 mockumentary
BBC, July 27, The hoax 'documentary' about human flesh-eating that shocked the UK
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Video shows UK satirical program, not human meat factory | Fact check
