Food libel laws, also known as food disparagement laws, are laws passed in 13 U.S states that make it easier for food industry interests to sue their critics for libel.

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 plantiff must prove that the defendant is deliberately and knowingly spreading false information. Under the Texas food disparagement law under which Oprah and Lyman were sued, the plantiffs--in this case, beef feedlot operator Paul Engler and the company Cactus Feeders--simply had to convince the jury that Lyman's statements on Oprah'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 Oprah 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.

Oprah and Lyman won their case in 1998. However, the lawsuit also had the effect of silencing Oprah. Oprah 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 carcinogenic but widely used apple agrichemical led to a brief slump in the apple market and a ban on 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.