A provocative Channel 4 satirical programme, The British Miracle Meat, has led to hundreds of complaints to media regulator Ofcom. The mockumentary depicts ordinary Britons facing the cost of living crisis selling thin slices of their tissue to an innovative factory that uses it to grow lab meat.
The show was inspired by Jonathan Swift’s satire A Modest Proposal (1726), in which the author of Gulliver’s Travels suggests poor Irish people sell their children for food. The Channel 4 show’s creators wanted to make viewers think about the effects of the cost of living crisis, as well as the future of food.
Viewers were left baffled, however, seeing the show as promoting cannibalism. In the UK, it is illegal to sell human organs and other tissues. But in economics, we teach our students the theory of “repugnant markets” – those in which disgust or distaste lead governments to ban certain transactions rather than tackling the underlying economic reasons for them.
