Company behind 'pink slime' sues ABC for $1.2billion as 'network wrongly told customers the product was unhealthy'

Beef Products Inc. has filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News for its coverage of a meat product dubbed 'pink slime,' claiming the network misled consumers into believing it is unhealthy and unsafe.

The Dakota Dunes, South Dakota-based meat processor is seeking $1.2 billion in damages for roughly 200 'false and misleading and defamatory' statements about the product officially known as lean, finely textured beef, said Dan Webb, BPI's Chicago-based attorney.

The lawsuit filed in a South Dakota state court on Thursday also accuses ABC News of improper interference with the relationships between BPI and its customers.

It 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,' Webb said before the company's official announcement.
ABC News, owned by The Walt Disney Co., denied BPI's claims.
'The lawsuit is without merit. We will contest it vigorously,' Jeffrey W. Schneider, the news station's senior vice president, said in a brief statement Thursday.

 

The reports cited in the lawsuit include 11 that aired on television and 14 that appeared online in March. Webb said the reports had 'an enormous impact' on the company, forcing it to close three of its four U.S. plants and lay off more than 650 workers.

Webb said the network also published a list of chain grocery stores that had stopped selling the product, and that this pressured others to end their business relationship with BPI.

Craig Letch, BPI's director of food-quality assurance, said the company lost 80 percent of its business in 28 days. Some of the customers have returned, he said, but BPI still doesn't have the customer base that would allow it to rehire former employees.

WHAT IS 'PINK SLIME'?

Pink slime, known in the meat industry as 'lean beef trimmings', is made up of the remnants of a cow carcass once all the muscular cuts of meat have been removed.

The lean of the meat is then separated from the fat using a form of centrifuge.
Because the meat comes from areas of the body more likely to be infected, it is sprayed with ammonium hydroxide to kill microbes which cause food poisoning.

The substance, which is ammonia mixed with water, removes pathogens such as salmonella and E.coli.    

The presence of pink slime in a packet of beef does not have to be signalled by the labelling, as it is not considered a separate ingredient but a process.