Amarillo, TX - Talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey will be in the Texas panhandle this week for a showdown with cattlemen who have a $12 million beef against her.
Jury selection was scheduled to start on Tuesday in a lawsuit in which the Texans charge that Winfrey drove down cattle prices by bad-mouthing hamburgers in a 1996 show about mad cow disease.
The case has larger implications because it is the biggest test so far of so-called "veggie libel" laws against disparaging agricultural products. Opponents contend the laws violate Constitutional rights to free speech.
In an April 15, 1996 show, cattle rancher-turned-vegetarian activist Howard Lyman said that feeding ground-up animal parts to cattle was a common practice that could spread mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, to humans in the United States.
"Now doesn't that concern you all a little bit, right here, learning that?" Winfrey asked the audience. "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger."
The plaintiffs, led by Amarillo feedlot owner Paul Engler, say the comments were misleading and cost them $12 million when cattle prices fell immediately after the show.
U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson has imposed a gag order forbidding comment by either side, but Winfrey said in an earlier statement she had the right "to ask questions and to hold a public debate on issues that impact the general public and my audience."
The brain-destroying mad cow disease has forced the slaughter of 1.5 million cows in Britain and led to the deaths of at least 20 people thought to have contracted it by eating infected beef. Scientists believe it was spread by feeding cattle ground-up sheep parts that carried the disease.
The United States ordered a halt to the practice of feeding most animal parts to cattle last year.
"Veggie libel" laws have been adopted in 13 states, including Texas, since 1989 news reports about the growth regulator Alar pushed down apple prices. Legal experts say the suit against Winfrey could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Winfrey, her Harpo Productions Inc., distributor King World Productions, and Lyman are defendants.
Winfrey will attend the trial, which is expected to last a month, and do her popular show from Amarillo, in the high plains of north Texas. The region, known as the panhandle, is home to many farms and ranches.
Her attorneys tried unsuccessfully to get the trial moved to Dallas, 360 miles to the southeast, because they said they could not get an impartial jury in Amarillo.
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