Are supermarkets in the UK selling 3D printed meat?

By October 30, 2024 Health, Science

Videos circulating on TikTok and other social media platforms appear to depict meat products with “3D Printed” labels on their packaging. These posts claim to show supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons stocking 3D printed meats under their own respective house brands – ranging from steak, whole chickens, and bacon slices.The video claiming to show Saintsbury’s smoked bacon slices in particular has garnered over 1.2 million views on TikTok.  The videos appear to show at least two of each product with the same labelling on the shelves on these supermarkets and do not appear to be digitally altered.

3D printing involves the production of a physical object from a digital design through laying down thin layers of material that are fused together. The quality and cost of the technology has made leaps and bounds in recent decades – being used in new and sometimes ground-breaking applications such as medicine. And, 3D printed food has been making headlines as another possible application.The concept of 3D printed meat specifically is a fairly new one. 3D printed meat made from actual animal cells to replicate the exact structure of a raw cut of meat from livestock is possible but has not yet become an available product on the market. Other companies instead focus on plant-based “meat” products (with more realistic meat-like textures). Some of these plant-based “meats” are even available in certain countries – being distributed to retailers and restaurants in places such as the UK and Israel and across Europe. 

However, despite the rapid advancement of 3D printing technology, we could not find any indication that any company has managed to produce meat products like the ones in the claim videos – nor has there been any other news from the supermarkets in question about rolling out 3D printed meat or meat-like products.

While the claim videos are captioned with seemingly serious and un-ironic claims about the supermarkets selling 3D printed meat, the account they are posted on, patterup.pu, has “Political Art” in its bio, which seems to suggest that the content they post is meant as a parody or a political statement.The same account has previous posts that appear to use a similar pattern in its content –  for instance clips of food products or signages in supermarkets with eye-catching and unsubstantiated claims such as “imploding security tags” or “nerve agents” being used to stop shoplifting. This further casts doubt on the veracity of the claim videos.Finally, one of the links in the account’s bio to an online storefront shows that the account is actually selling prints and stickers identical to those used in the claim videos. This suggests that the person or persons behind the account might have used the same stickers on actual meat products in supermarkets to produce the claim videos.In response to questions from Reuters, Tesco, Saintsbury’s and Morrisons have since emphasised that the claims being made in the video are false.

Therefore, we give the claim that UK supermarkets are selling 3D printed meat a rating of false. There is no evidence that the meats shown in the videos (such as whole 3D printed chickens) are products available for sale in any markets. The source of the videos is a “political art” account with a track record of producing similar videos with unsubstantiated claims. The same source also has product label stickers identical to the ones in the claim videos for sale in an online shop.

The introduction of alternative meat sources – be it cultivated meat or plant-based meats – has been a topic of intense and often heated discourse on social media. Many users already react with disgust and outrage to legitimate news about the arrival of such products on supermarket shelves.

When falsified or misleading videos such as the ones in this claim are added to the mix and mistakenly taken at face value, the amount of confusion and conflict only increases. This worsens as the videos are clipped and re-shared on different platforms.

The nature of these videos in particular is interesting in the context of a social media landscape increasingly filled with AI or digitally manipulated clips. The lack of digital manipulation (and the packages of meat appearing to be physically on supermarket shelves) might have even made it more believable to some. It therefore remains extremely important to be critical of viral content – and to closely examine their source before absorbing information as truth.

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