Cattlemen Want Oprah to Eat Her Words

It started with a few stinging words and has escalated into the legal equivalent of a high-plains range war. On Tuesday, the duelists hunkered down inside an oak-paneled courtroom in this cow town’s federal building, poised for a constitutional showdown over whether talk show host Oprah Winfrey cost Texas cattlemen nearly $7 million by questioning the safety of American meat before her vast television audience.

The court clash is all about money--the fortunes that north Texas cattle barons claim began to disappear into the prairie wind soon after Winfrey moderated an April 1996 discussion of beef safety on her nationally syndicated show.

They are suing Winfrey for allowing beef industry foes to suggest on her program that American livestock might be prone to “mad cow disease,” the fatal brain malady that has killed British herds and spread to some humans. And they are suing because of Winfrey’s alarmed response: “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger.”

That statement prompted applause from Winfrey’s loyal audience--and then, according to lawyers for the angry cattlemen, caused widespread panic as prices plunged for days in the volatile beef futures market. Winfrey’s remarkable ability to persuade 15 million viewers to embark on mass diets and buy hundreds of thousands of copies of obscure books, cattlemen argue, panicked traders into worrying that her audience might shun American-bred beef.

“People of influence have to be careful about what they say,” said John Michener, an owner of the Amarillo Livestock Auction, a manure-caked parade ground where 3,000 head of cattle were herded before bidders Tuesday, several miles from where Winfrey and the cattlemen watched jury selection.

By day’s end, U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson had picked a jury of eight men and four women. Opening statements will start today.

The plaintiffs are seeking to recoup total damages of more than $12 million.

The sparring in Amarillo is also about the power of the uttered word--whether the constitutional guarantees of free speech override the right of businesses to protect their products from public slander. The Amarillo cattlemen are taking Winfrey on under a Texas law that bars reckless statements about food products.

Known as “veggie libel laws,” these pro-business statutes have been passed in 12 other states, but are meeting their first true test in the Winfrey case. “This is where we’ll see whether they stand up to 1st Amendment protections,” said Floyd Abrams, a New York attorney who specializes in constitutional free-speech cases.

When a show trial pits a nationally taste-making television personality from Chicago against a stubborn posse of Texas cattlemen, issues of style and regional sensibility can’t help but surface.

Amarillo is used to the high profiles of its local cattle barons, men who blithely buy thundering steer calf herds during livestock auctions, then repair to local steakhouses for drinks and chili-drenched sides of beef. But the town has never seen the likes of a celebrity powerhouse like Oprah, who moved her talk show to Amarillo for at least a month and is taking over an entire bed-and-breakfast inn and flying in her production company and celebrity guests, such as actor Patrick Swayze and basketball veteran Charles Barkley.

“Would you look at her?” said Amarillo resident Billie Taylor, when she caught a glimpse of Winfrey heading for the courthouse door past a throng of gawkers and vegetarian protesters wearing cow costumes. “She’s in her own class of people, that’s for sure.”

When the Amarillo cattlemen marched into the courthouse’s first-floor elevator Tuesday to watch jury selection, they passed under a wall mural depicting grazing cattle--an artistic nod to the reigning influence of the beef industry in this prosperous capital of the Texas Panhandle.

“Let’s face facts. Beef made this town,” said T.J. Lowery, 70, an Arkansas native who owns 3,200 acres of northeast Texas buffalo grass where 350 head of cattle now graze. “She may win this case, but this little lady’s going to find out you don’t trifle with cattle people.”

Winfrey, wearing a stylish black suit, radiated power in her own way, silent as she passed through the courthouse metal detector. While lawyers and spectators emptied their pockets of troublesome metal tangles of keys, coins and watches, Winfrey removed only a pair of designer sunglasses, a small symbol of the financial freedom she enjoys--and the clout she will wield in defending herself.

Aided by a team of hired legal guns from Dallas, Winfrey has spent two years trying to avoid relocating to Amarillo for trial. Requests for a change of venue were tersely turned down by Robinson, a no-nonsense courtroom overseer who sped through jury selection questioning on Tuesday.

Winfrey’s legal plight began with the taping of the April 1996 show on mad cow disease, the term given to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and its emergence in British herds.

Meat opponent Howard Lyman, a vegetarian and Humane Society spokesman, insisted that a beef industry practice of allowing cattle that die in feedlots to be used as a protein supplement to fatten livestock awaiting slaughter could lead to the introduction of mad cow disease in the U.S. “If only one of them has mad cow disease,” Lyman said, “it has the potential to affect thousands.”

Then Oprah spoke.

Cattle futures prices plummeted. Hardest hit in the industry were Amarillo’s cattle feedlots, which account for a quarter of the production of all U.S. beef. The lots, where young cattle are housed and fed grain before being sent to slaughterhouses, are the most vulnerable to sharp drops in cattle prices because feed costs can escalate while the cattle sit. The higher their costs, the more quickly profits erode.

One of those caught up in the free fall was Paul Engler, an Amarillo cattleman who owns Cactus Feeders Inc., a major feedlot business. In court papers, Engler disclosed that when Winfrey’s “mad cow” show aired, he had 170,000 head of cattle in his feedlots. The sudden spiral in beef futures caused him immediate losses of nearly $2.3 million, Engler’s attorneys claimed.

Small cattle ranchers also took the market losses hard. Larry Alford, who owns a herd of 600 cattle in Claude, 30 miles east of Amarillo, lost $6 a head. “Nobody got out of this squeaky clean,” Alford said.

Alford was one of scores of cattlemen who showed up Tuesday at the livestock auction, eyeing 3,000 steers in the parade pit.

“We had to go after her,” said one feedlot man who declined to be named. “Too many people lost their shirts.”

Their weapon was Texas’ agriculture disparagement law, a 1995 statute passed by the Legislature after heavy lobbying by meat- and agricultural-industry agents. “Veggie libel” laws have become a new weapon in the food industry’s arsenal ever since apple growers were traumatized by the Alar scare of 1989.

Fears that that chemical might causing health hazards were trumpeted by CBS’ “60 Minutes” and other news organizations. When the fears proved unfounded, apple growers sued CBS. But the lawsuit was thrown out of court--partly because the judge ruled that a libel case can only be filed by a party directly injured by the claims.

The response was “veggie libel laws.”

“Given the tenor of the times, where activists will do anything to get attention,” such laws are the only recourse for food producers, said Steve Kopperud, senior vice president of the Arlington, Va.-based American Feed Industry Assn.

Winfrey’s cattle industry foes insist that the talk show host knew full well the impact of her statement as soon as the cattle future prices began falling. Before one of her audiences, her foes’ court documents relate, she referred to the livestock price plunge as the “Oprah crash.”

“Whether she meant it or not, when she spoke, the bottom fell out,” said Lowery. “What it tells me is you better watch your language.”

Researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this story.