Is a real human meat product available on store shelves? No, that's not true: The product in the photo posted on social media is not human meat but a fake label added to ground- beef packaging. It is the work of artist Jeff Wysaki, who creates satirical food products and toys bearing the brand logo "Obvious Plant." Some of his spoof toy creations are planted on store shelves as part of the joke, but Wysaki told The Verge in 2019 that the food items are only photographed and not left behind.
The image of "People Meat" appeared in a post on Instagram (archived here) on January 3, 2024, by @davidavacadowolfe. It was simply captioned:
WTH?!
This is how the post appeared at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jan 05 16:34:10 2024 UTC)
Text on the package of meat reads:
86% LEAN 14% FAT
IT'S for the PEOPLE MEAT
'Quality Meats made from people like you!' -CEO Fritz Pfeiffer
100% USA CATTLE NO HORMONES NO ANTIBIOTICS NO FEEDLOTS PO38B
FREE RANGE: NEVER CONFINED TO A FEEDLOT KEEP REFRIGERATED OR FROZEN
DISTRIBUTED FOR PASTURE ONE 245 KENTUCKY ST STE B-1
PETALUMA CA 94952 WWW.PASTUREONE.COM
OBVIOUS PLANT NET WT 16 OZ (1 LB)
The website listed on the label, www.pastureone.com, is now in the Kazakh language, according to Google Translate, and it appears the domain has a new owner. Using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which has 51 captures for the URL dating back to 2015, Lead Stories found an August 18, 2018, archive that shows a copy of the page when Pasture One's website was associated with an American grass-fed beef company. On the archived contact page there is a note:
Pasture One is aware of the recent internet MEME/Image of 'People Meat.' Pasture One had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of that image, nor did we give permission for anyone to use or manipulate our label in any way.
In the Lead Stories composite image pictured below, on the left is an image of the appearance of a one-pound package of Pasture One Grass Fed and Finished Ground Beef as it once appeared for sale on the website touchofmodern.com. On the right is the altered "People Meat" label posted on Instagram with the "Obvious Plant" logo added in the lower left corner. Many details of the original packaging, including the Pasture One website and company address, remain unchanged, however, in the image posted on Instagram.
(Source: touchofmodern.com and Instagram screenshots taken on Fri Jan 05 18:04:39 2024 UTC)
Obvious Plant has accounts on many social media platforms, such as tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and X, and has been featured in articles in KnowYourMeme.com, Buzzfeed and Bored Panda. Wysaki was interviewed by The Verge for a February 22, 2019, article called, "The internet's best fake toys are going in a fake museum." There is a seven-picture slideshow included in The Verge article that illustrates how Wysaki painstakingly makes the packaging for a one-off toy, including the plastic bubble and the specially shaped hole for hanging in a store display rack. When asked, "How many of the toys that you make do you actually leave on the shelves?", he replied:
I leave almost everything, except for food because FDA laws are pretty crazy. So I'll just take a picture of a food item and take them with me. If it's an item I'm selling, I'll just take the photo and take it with me. But I originally left some of the early toys in a store.
In the Lead Stories composite image below, the original June 13, 2018, People Meat Facebook post from Obvious Plant (below left) is captioned, "Wow..." An assortment of thumbnail images (below right) from the Photo Album of the Obvious Plant Facebook Page shows the campy and quirky vintage style of some of the joke products, both food and toys, that Wysaki made.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image made with Facebook screenshots taken on Fri Jan 05 22:03:00 2024 UTC)
