On this day in vegan history · April 16, 1996
Oprah, a Vegetarian Rancher, and the Burger That Stopped Her Cold
One talk-show hour about mad cow disease knocked cattle futures limit-down within an hour and, two years later, put freedom of the press on trial in Amarillo.
The facts
- Broadcast
- "Dangerous Food," The Oprah Winfrey Show, April 16, 1996
- Market reaction
- Live cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange hit limit-down within an hour of the broadcast
- Lawsuit
- Texas cattlemen sued under the state's False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act of 1995
- Outcome
- Jury ruled for Winfrey and Lyman on February 26, 1998; the Fifth Circuit affirmed on February 9, 2000
On April 16, 1996, The Oprah Winfrey Show aired a segment called "Dangerous Food," built around Britain's mad cow disease crisis. Guest Howard Lyman, a fourth-generation Montana cattle rancher turned vegetarian and Humane Society campaigner, told Winfrey that American ranchers were still feeding rendered cattle back to cattle, the same practice that had spread bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the UK. Winfrey replied on air that his warning "has just stopped me cold from eating another burger." Texas cattlemen, led by feedlot owner Paul Engler, sued Winfrey, Lyman, and her production company under the state's brand-new food-disparagement law, seeking more than ten million dollars. A jury cleared both defendants in February 1998, and a federal appeals court upheld that verdict two years later.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger.
Oprah Winfrey, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, April 16, 1996
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The case became the definitive test of the "veggie libel" laws that food industries had pushed through more than a dozen state legislatures to chill criticism of their products, and it lost. Two years after the verdict, Lyman published Mad Cowboy and kept touring as one of the most credible ex-insiders arguing for a plant-based food system, precisely because cattlemen had put his credibility on trial and failed to break it.
Sources
This history is still being written.
Every morning the brief covers what moved veganism forward, and every day one more verified piece of that story joins this almanac. Free, and tomorrow’s lands in your inbox.
Free, every morning. No guilt. No preaching.