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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Cattlemen Lay Out Beef With Oprah Mad Cow Disease Program Left Out Truth, Lawyer Says

John W. Gonzalez Houston Chronicle

Attorneys for Texas cattle companies told a federal court jury Wednesday that in a quest to produce a “scary” show about dangerous foods, talk show host Oprah Winfrey discarded fairness and emphasized extremist views about mad cow disease that caused the cattlemen nearly $10 million in damages.

“The truth was left on the editing room floor,” attorney Joe Coyne said in opening statements at Winfrey’s trial under the 1995 Texas food disparagement law.

But Winfrey’s defense team countered that Winfrey’s 1996 broadcast was not the reason that the cattle companies suffered financial losses that year.

“The plaintiffs did not lose one penny because of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,”’ said her lawyer, Charles Babcock.

Winfrey was present throughout the half-day proceedings.

She, the jury and U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson viewed not only the controversial hourlong show but the unedited 80-minute taping from which the show was gleaned. As noted by the cattlemen’s attorneys, the taping included many more pro-beef comments than the broadcast version.

And that was by design, said plaintiff’s lawyer David Mullen, who said 92 percent of the comments by a beef industry spokesman were edited out of the program.

“The intention was to create a scary show. The truth is not as interesting,” Mullen said. “They suppressed the truth and went with sensationalism and lies.”

He referred to the program’s prominent use of remarks by co-defendant Howard Lyman of the Humane Society, who said mad cow disease would rival the AIDS epidemic, and its discarding of most of the rebuttal remarks from spokesmen of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

“The truth is, American beef is safe,” Mullen said. “No case of mad cow disease has been diagnosed. Not a one.”

Lyman described the since-discontinued practice of feeding cattle that were not fit for human consumption to other cattle - a practice that contributed to the spread of mad cow disease in Europe. Winfrey was aghast at Lyman’s descriptions and vowed never to touch another hamburger.

Coyne said not only was the edited show misleading, but he claimed Winfrey intentionally acted as a “cheerleader” during breaks to create a “lynch-mob mentality” among the studio audience, causing them to jeer certain pro-beef statements.

Although the Texas cattlemen were never mentioned in the broadcast, they still suffered damages when cattle prices dropped in the two days after the show, Coyne said.

Babcock told the jury that perhaps the show was scary, but it was also a serious treatment of several health issues related to food. The program touched on the dangers of fatal E. coli bacteria in undercooked beef and also included food-handling tips.