Pink Slime Manufacturer Suing ABC News For $1.2 Billion

ABC News is being sued by Beef Products, Inc. for $1.2 billion. The lawsuit claims that ABC News made consumers believe that pink slime product is somehow unsafe and unhealthy for consumers.

In the lawsuit Beef Products, Inc. claims that ABC News made nearly 200 “false and misleading and defamatory” statements about the product.

Industry products refer to pink slime as lean, finely textured beef.

In one claim ABC spoke with a former USDA scientist who claims that pink slime was “beef trimmings that were once used only in dog food and cooking oil, now sprayed with ammonia to make them safe to eat and then added to most ground beef as a cheaper filler.”

An attorney for BPI in an interview with the Associated Press revealed:

“[The ABC News reports have] caused consumers to believe that our lean beef is not beef at all — that it’s an unhealthy pink slime, unsafe for public consumption, and that somehow it got hidden in the meat.”

ABC News plans to “vigorously defend” its reporting of the pink slime product.

Since ABC News originally ran its pink slime coverage the meat industry has almost completely abandoned the product, leading to the closure of 3 out of 4 production facilities. The closing of those plants had led to the loss of 650 jobs.

Here is one of the reports that was produced by ABC:

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Do you think ABC News in how it chose to broadcast various stories pertaining to the pink slime product and its industry as a whole?