A mockumentary about the commercialization of human flesh has shocked the UK public. Gregg Wallacea presenter known for presenting MasterChef on the BBC, announced last week the premiere on Channel Four of The British Miracle Meat (British Meat Miracle), a show in which he would appear eating a steak with “a very revolutionary ingredient”. When at last, The British Miracle Meat hit the screens last Monday, Wallace and his partner Michel Roux appeared in the company Good Harvest in Lincolnshire, where they described an innovative process in meat production: according to the programme’s narrative, several volunteers had received 250 pounds (291 euros), in exchange for leaving the company tear off a piece of skin. Once extracted, the sample would have been taken to the Good Harvest lab for genetic cultivation. At that stage, a machine would have managed to turn small shavings of human skin into large fillets ready to be packaged and sold in supermarkets.
The documentary included a geopolitical explanation of the case. The supposed manager of the companyMick Rossexplained in the program that, “from the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Unionthe new legislation allows the use of this type of method”.
Methods that would allow obtaining a product cheaper than conventional meat sold in supermarkets and with more nutrients, including collagen. So that the cannibalism would appear as an accelerator for the UK economy, wobbly since 2019.
The program of Channel Four its broadcast ended and its viewers watched it horrified, as if they had witnessed a bombing. Twitter was filled with messages against the show and against Gregg Wallace that it only took a few minutes to confess: “I see too many comments from people enraged by the documentary, the truth is that they should calm down.” Immediately, in another message from the same social network, she shared a video in which she clarified that the entire documentary had been a lie.
Of course, a lie does not mean the same as a scam. The creators of The British Miracle Meat They have recalled that the mockumentary genre has a tradition in the English-language media, with the obvious milestone being the radio broadcast of the program War of the Worlds directed by Orson Welles from the novel H.G. There, the deception was an alien invasion that was to express the anguish of Europeans and Americans on the eve of the World War II.