October 28, 2015
Oprah Winfrey vs. The Beef People
January 20, 1998 at 12:00 AM EDT
Editor’s Comment: Do you remember this program in 1998? Oprah was sued by the Beef Conglomerate for her comment: “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!”Will they now sue the WHO? |
TRANSCRIPT
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it, and I’m President of the United States. And I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH : Former President George Bush’s public disparagement of broccoli did not go far enough to bring on a lawsuit. But if he had said the vegetable endangers people and not had proof, then in some states broccoli farmers could have sued. Since 1990, 13 states, from Georgia to Idaho, have adopted food defamation laws. That, in effect, allowed broccoli to stay in court. Under these laws individuals can be sued for questioning the safety of any food product without verifiable scientific proof, for ridiculing radishes or picking on pears, for example, or, as TV personality Oprah Winfrey discovered, belittling beef.
OPRAH WINFREY : Today’s show may cause you to diet for all the wrong reasons. We’re talking about the hidden dangers in our food.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH : Last year in the first court test of these laws Texas cattle ranchers filed suit against Winfrey and one of her guests, a Humane Society official, for defaming beef during an April 1996 Oprah show.
Here’s what was said. “Oprah Winfrey, you said Mad Cow Disease could make AIDS look like the common cold?”
Lyman: “Absolutely.”
Winfrey: “That’s an extreme statement, you know.”
Lyman: “Absolutely.” One hundred thousand cows per year in the United States are fine at night, dead in the morning. The majority of those cows are rounded up, ground up, fed back to other cows. If only one of them has Mad Cow Disease, it has the potential to infect thousands.”
Winfrey: “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!”
After the broadcast, cattle prices dropped to near 10-year lows and ranchers blamed their losses on the show. Winfrey and her lawyers cite other reasons behind the drop. The talk show host has relocated her show from Chicago to Amarillo, Texas, where the trial is being held, until the jury reaches a decision. The cattlemen are claiming more than $12 million in damages. The only other Texas food defamation lawsuit is before the same court in Amarillo:
Click on Link:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law-jan-june98-fooddef_1-20/
