DAKOTA DUNES, S.D. — BPI (collectively Beef Products, Inc., BPI Technology, Inc., and Freezing Machines, Inc.) has brought a billion dollar suit against ABC News for defamation of its beef product, lean, finely textured beef, which ABC reporters referred to as “pink slime.”
Speaking on behalf of his client, BPI, attorney Dan Webb, chairman, Winston & Strawn, LLP, told the press this morning that the case against ABC will be tried by a jury in a Union County, S.D., court.
BPI claims ABC made approximately 200 false and misleading statements over a period of nearly a month that misled consumers and caused tremendous damage to BPI.
“Our sales dropped 80% in a few days,” Craig Letch BPI’s director of food safety and quality assurance, said. That necessitated shuttering two facilities and the layoff of 700 employees.
“ABC had consumers believing my client’s product was not beef at all, that it was a filler not safe for human consumption and that BPI had committed economic food fraud on consumers,” Webb said.
Read more: Schools Opt for Ground Beef Without Infamous Filler
“All of those statements by ABC were false,” Webb said.
“And that wasn’t enough. First they targeted consumers and then BPI customers, listing supermarket chains that were using the product and praising those that stopped using it,” he added.
“We think this defamation is unparalleled in duration, in the number of false statements and in the number of people it reached with false statements.”
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