Food Libel Laws

In 1996, Oprah Winfrey and one of her guests, Howard Lyman , were the first people to be sued under a new kind of law that agribusiness had spent considerable effort lobbying for. These laws establish a weaker standard of proof in food-product libel lawsuits than in normal American libel lawsuits.

In a normal U.S. libel suit, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant is deliberately and knowingly spreading false information. Under the Texas food disparagement law under which Winfrey and Lyman were sued, the plaintiffs--in this case, beef Feedlot operator Paul Engler and the company Cactus Feeders --simply had to convince the jury that Lyman's statements on Winfrey's show deviated from "reasonable and reliable scientific inquiry, facts, or data." Other states' food disparagement laws follow a similarly reduced standard of evidence.

One obvious trouble with such a law is that two reasonable, reliable scientists may not always agree. The subject that Engler and Cactus Feeders were suing Winfrey and Lyman over was BSE , which has notoriously seen respected, reliable researchers reach quite different conclusions. Worse, such a law partially shifts the burden of proof from the accuser. In food disparagement cases, the accuser no longer needs to prove that the supposedly libellous statements are in fact false...let alone that the defendant knowingly spread false information.

Winfrey and Lyman won their case in 1998. However, the lawsuit also had the effect of silencing Winfrey. She stopped speaking on the issue, going so far as to decline to make videotapes of the original interview available to enquiring journalists ( Rampton And Stauber , 1997--p. 192).

Proponents of food disparagement laws often cite the Alar "scare" as proof of the necessity of such laws, as farmers' protection against a loose-lipped public. In the Alar incident, a CBS report on a Carcinogen ic but widely used Apple agrichemical led to a brief slump in the apple market and a ban on the chemical. Apple growers subsequently sued CBS under existing libel laws and lost (perhaps because the chemical is, in fact, carcinogenic.) "Never again--not another Alar" became a rallying cry for the food industry.

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REFERENCES

Rampton and Stauber. ''Mad Cow USA: Could the nightmare happen here?'' Madison, WI: Common Courage Press, 1997.

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Food Libel Laws

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