These days, in the age of the ‘deep fake’ and Chat GPT, it’s getting harder to tell what’s real. But surely, if one turns on the TV and sees presenter Gregg Wallace strolling through a factory wearing a hairnet then we trust we are about to learn, albeit amid much gurning and foghorn bonhomie, how something is made.
This, at least, is the lure of Channel 4’s astonishing British Meat Miracle documentary. Wallace drives his Range Rover to the factory of a meat ‘disruptor’ called Good Harvest who, he informs us, are selling prime cuts of human-harvested meat for 99p.
I’ve met Wallace and he once gave me a lift to the station and so I know that his Range Rover is real. Similarly the Good Harvest HQ is in Boston, Lincs sounds about right and we soon meet Mick the lab-coated production manager.
Again, one instinctively feels one knows what a meat factory production manager should look like and Mick – grizzled, 50ish, hair-netted – indisputably is it. It’s only when we see him presiding over a “nutrient vat” in which slivers of human flesh that look like high-end prosciutto are being grown into a 30kg cylindrical steak that one presses ‘pause’ and ponders: I know the climate, Western democracy and personal finances are taking a bit of a hit right now, and I know that’s the real Gregg Wallace and his real car, but isn’t making burgers from the flesh of poor people against the law?
I liked Wallace’s BBC series Inside The Factory (he recently resigned from the show after using 100% authentic “inappropriate banter” amongst staff at a Nestle factory). After a long day at work, watching thousands of KitKats roll off a conveyor belt felt strangely soothing and this programme is expertly put together in much the same way.
The cod sciencey bits, the jaunty soundtrack and the rabbit-in-the-headlights factory staff struggling to cope with Wallace’s enthusiasm all play their part. But seeing the giant human steak followed by Mick’s enthusiastic commentary finally is the moment it’s clear there was more to this than meets the eye. At one stage, Mick even tells us eating humans was a benefit of Brexit. “Thankfully now we’re out we can harvest people and pay them for their flesh,” he explains and with that, the full satirical feast is duly served.
I’ve always found Michel Roux Jnr, owner of Michelin-starred restaurant Le Gavroche a rather shy, dignified master of his craft but The British Meat Miracle showcases some undiscovered acting skills. When Wallace shoves a steak harvested from someone living in the North East of England in front of him, Roux wants to know how this will affect “flavour”.
“What about a beer-fed Geordie?” ponders Wallace and Roux is worryingly convincing on the importance of “terroir” even when it comes to industrialised cannibalism.
Just as I was about to ring family living up North and tell them to lock all doors or shoot Wallace on sight (to be honest, some are already prepared for the latter) the ‘mockumentary’ lost its satirical power.
We visit a clinic where “donors” are preparing to give up flesh for money. One of them needs the cash to pay her energy bills. Another wants to remove black mould from his house and the ‘We’re All In This Together’ poster on the clinic wall makes the show’s intentions obvious, as does the end-title thanks to Jonathan Swift (the 18th century satirist once wrote a satire suggesting poor people sell their children as food to the rich).
Sure there is a cost of living crisis, a war and a climate emergency but who or what is the true target of this satire? The government? The meat industry? Or people only vaguely paying attention to terrestrial TV in the evenings because it’s full of crap food programmes hosted by Gregg Wallace and there’s rarely anything really meaty to watch?
