All is not what it seems in this profile of human meat factories – including toddler tartare canapes. It’s a neat satire about the cost of living crisis, even if it is in no way subtle
Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat begins in the usual way – with me reaching for the volume button, checking the running time (only half an hour – hurrah!) and wondering, yet again, why this man is shouting at me. This time it is about “THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS! NOW IT COSTS A PACKET JUST TO BRING HOME THE BACON! AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON EGGS!”
Off we go with GREGG to a guarded processing plant in Lincolnshire belonging to a food technology firm which houses a production line and clinical facilities, that for the last eight months, have been producing meat made from human cells. Line manager Mick Ross explains that it is a relatively new process. “Under EU law we couldn’t possibly operate machines like this.” We see little shavings of flesh (donors are paid about £250 a time, which as Wallace points out is enough to cover an average fortnight’s energy bills) hanging in a nutrient-rich vat and quickly developing into huge slabs of meat (“STUNNING!”). They can yield up to 100 steaks which – according to taste tests carried out with men and women in the street by co-presenter Michelle Ackerley – are remarkably fine substitutes for the real thing and at a fraction of the price. Could this be the answer to part of the cost of living crisis?
