Food libel laws
Many of the food-disparagement laws establish a lower standard for civil liability and allow for punitive damages and attorney's fees for plaintiffs alone, regardless of the case's outcome.
[2] An example of the situation is the New York Times reporting about "facts from a study showing the amounts of lead found in over-the-counter calcium supplements" being censored.
[4] Seeking recompense, eleven Washington State apple growers banded together to sue CBS for trade libel: the intentional publication of false information about a product.
Trade libel laws stipulate that the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff, meaning that the growers needed to prove in court by "the preponderance of the evidence" that 60 Minutes' claims about daminozide's carcinogenicity were dubious in order for the jury to decide in their favor.
According to the unknown whistleblower and ABC News, BPI's LFTB was derived from beef trimmings sprayed with ammonia, and resembled "pink slime".
They claimed that ABC News falsely portrayed their product, lean finely textured beef, as unfit for human consumption.
Under South Dakota's Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act, BPI could have received as much as $5.7 billion in statutory trebled damages were ABC News found liable.
[22] The Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the New York Times was supported in part by their argument that the advertisement was not explicitly "of or concerning" Sullivan, and so did not constitute libelous speech.
[5] States which broadly define the parties who are eligible to sue under food libel laws have also come under criticism for disregarding the "of or concerning" element.
Smaller publishers, without the financial means to mount a defense should the producer of a food product oppose an author's commentary on it, have significantly revised or even canceled potentially liable books.
Robert Hatherill's Eat to Beat Cancer and Britt Bailey's Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food are notable examples of this practice.
[24] The former was subject to extensive editing by its publisher—whole sections related to links between meat and cancer were deleted—and the latter was canceled entirely after its publisher received a letter from Monsanto warning of a possible suit.
[5] Ozzie Zehner self-censored his Green Illusions, an analysis of the detrimental effects of certain environmental protection initiatives, because it included criticism of agribusiness.
[5] The documentary featured a scene in which Robert Kenner interviewed Barbara Kowalcyk, a scientist and food-safety activist whose son had died after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli.
When Kenner asks Kowalcyk how her eating habits have changed after her son's death, she replies that she is unable to discuss the subject because doing so might open her up to a lawsuit under food libel legislation.
