Maintenance Phase - Oprah v. Beef Part 2： Apocalypse Cow

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, where you get a lawsuit, you get a

00:00:16.020 lawsuit, everybody gets a lawsuit.

00:00:19.640 That's very good, Aubrey.

00:00:21.580 Thank you also for not doing the voice.

00:00:23.400 Oh, you're welcome.

00:00:24.300 It was a long-term choice.

00:00:26.140 You are Michael Hobbs.

00:00:27.780 You are Aubrey Gordon.

00:00:29.040 And today, Michael, we are taking up the thrilling conclusion of our story about Oprah v. The Cattlemen's Association. Is that right?

00:00:40.760 Oprah versus beef. Yes.

00:00:43.340 So where are we diving in?

00:00:45.360 Well, why don't you do a little previously on, Aubrey? Because it hasn't been that long for us, but for listeners, it's been two weeks.

00:00:53.320 So, uh, when last we left Oprah, she had aired an episode about mad cow disease and she had

00:01:04.400 said things like, this is freaked me out enough that I'm not going to eat another burger again.

00:01:10.140 And these cattle ranchers argued that this took a, uh, this led to a massive hit in their sales.

00:01:17.040 Yes.

00:01:17.460 So they sued her under Texas's ag gag law. 0.57

00:01:20.820 Sirloin slander.

00:01:21.700 She and her team decided that it was important to take it seriously so that she didn't get hit with wave after wave of lawsuit.

00:01:31.000 And as part of taking it seriously, she hired a jury consultant named Dr. Phil.

00:01:38.100 Mr. Dr. Reverend Phil. Yes.

00:01:40.360 Great. The third.

00:01:41.260 So a little bit of timeline. March of 1996 is when Britain reports the first human cases of mad cow disease.

00:01:48.820 April of 1996 is when Oprah does her fateful Dangerous Foods episode.

00:01:55.020 May of 1996 is when the cattlemen sue her for the baffling sum of $12 million.

00:02:02.000 Throughout the course of 1996, they're doing, you know, it's like pre-trial stuff.

00:02:06.640 They're like the motion to do this and the motion to do that.

00:02:08.980 And they're like arguing over like technical stuff.

00:02:10.700 So it's not until January of 1998 that the trial actually starts.

00:02:16.720 it's wild how goddamn long it's weird i know trials and the legal system take like i absolutely

00:02:24.700 remember this from organizing days when people would be like we just need to take it to the 0.50

00:02:28.160 supreme court and they'll overturn the whole thing and i'm like cool hang out for like a decade i

00:02:34.020 actually remember this growing up do you remember growing up that oprah actually filmed her show

00:02:38.100 in texas for six weeks no i don't remember this so this is one of the weirdest footnotes to the

00:02:44.840 story that Oprah was under contract to produce a certain number of shows per year. So she couldn't

00:02:51.180 just like take time off and go be on trial in Texas. So they rented out the largest theater

00:02:58.980 in Amarillo, Texas and like did her show there. So every day for six weeks, she would be in trial, 0.54

00:03:06.440 like in a courtroom all day. And then at night, she would go straight to this theater and film

00:03:11.400 an episode of oprah god and it was really weird because the judge imposed a gag order oprah was

00:03:17.920 not allowed to say anything even like tangentially related to any of the issues that came up in the

00:03:23.580 trial and like she constantly made jokes about this on tv she's like you're gonna tell a talk

00:03:28.440 show host not to say anything like this kind of became a running joke so there's these like

00:03:32.920 genuinely like pretty funny and charming clips of her interviewing celebrities like there's one

00:03:38.040 where she's talking to Patrick Swayze and he's telling some story and he's like, I was driving

00:03:41.740 around. I ate a hamburger. And then Oprah sort of like leans into the microphone and she's like,

00:03:45.400 I have no opinion about hamburgers. I have none, no thoughts in my brain about beef.

00:03:50.080 Sure. This is the Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien of its day, right? Like no one's saying anything,

00:03:55.800 but everything's kind of about it. Right. Also, I just looked up the population of Amarillo,

00:04:01.580 Texas in 1998 was 170,000 people. Yeah, it's a very small city. It's a small city and Oprah is

00:04:10.960 in it in 1998 at the height of her powers. It's also very ironic because the lawyers for the

00:04:17.480 cattlemen deliberately chose Amarillo as a venue to fuck over Oprah, right? Because this is a town 0.99

00:04:23.880 who's almost their entire economy depends on beef. The largest employer is a slaughterhouse,

00:04:29.320 25 percent of the country's cattle is produced like in this region and amarillo is kind of like

00:04:36.580 a hub for the entire industry so like the population of people there and like the jury pool 0.69

00:04:42.140 is all like super pro beef so it's actually like pretty fucked up yeah but it also speaks to oprah's

00:04:48.760 power because she's so popular and her popularity transcends all kinds of lines of like race and 0.94

00:04:55.280 ethnicity and age and class that she goes down there and pretty soon there's a line around the

00:05:01.100 block starting at 4 a.m to get tickets to her show yeah and like she becomes this like really

00:05:05.920 celebrated figure so apparently there's this like dueling battle of bumper stickers that people will

00:05:13.060 have bumper stickers on their car that are like amarillo hearts oprah and then people are also 0.99

00:05:18.440 putting bumper stickers on their car that say the only mad cow in amarillo is oprah holy shit 1.00

00:05:25.900 getting into some uh deeper deeper topics there uh calling a black woman a mad cow 1.00

00:05:32.660 god it does appear to be the case that overwhelmingly like public opinion 0.60

00:05:40.400 eventually swung toward oprah over the course of the six weeks this is like when a celebrity shows

00:05:46.140 up in portland oregon and everyone loses their minds it's like when people from seattle pretend

00:05:51.880 that tom scarrett is a celebrity tom scarrett lives here like no one knows who that is if you're not

00:05:56.540 in seattle it's fine we used to have the ever clear guy yeah i also want to read some of the

00:06:06.360 the either great or terrible headlines coming out of this trial depending on your perspective

00:06:12.020 that this as we discussed last episode this is like the height of bad dad puns so there's of

00:06:18.920 course cattlemen have cow over oprah show classic is there a move over no this is the one i wanted

00:06:26.140 to do this is the one i feel like they're leaving it on the table really you gotta have a moo one

00:06:31.100 cattlemen have bad motivations in suing oprah love it there's also oprah comma cattlemen

00:06:38.880 lock horns good texas jury hears meaty libel case i feel like maybe the best one i saw is it just

00:06:47.420 says a lot at stake and it's s-t-e-a-k which is pretty good that's really i enjoyed the steak

00:06:54.000 there's an editorial in the tennessean that says beef against oprah is a case of bologna

00:06:59.760 which i don't know bologna isn't like made of beef i don't think so i don't know if it works

00:07:04.820 literally knows what baloney's made of and then the best academic article about this i saw it was

00:07:09.980 called apocalypse cow also quite good god that would be great anywhere but especially in an 0.95

00:07:20.260 academic setting i love it when academics are like fuck it i'm going in and then i am also going to 0.95

00:07:26.360 send you one of the richest fucking texts i've ever seen this is from the kitty kelly biography 0.99

00:07:33.040 of oprah if it wasn't you we wouldn't be talking about this but i think that this is going to make 0.98

00:07:38.460 you melt down you're like maybe the only person who when you say i'm gonna send you something and

00:07:44.060 it's gonna make you melt down i'm like yeah like oh going in let's go uh okay the female judge 1.00

00:07:52.740 refused to allow women to wear pants in her courtroom so oprah wore a skirt every day 1996

00:07:59.640 It's not 1951.

00:08:01.420 It's 1996.

00:08:02.400 Quote, I love the fact that no cameras were allowed in the courtroom, she said.

00:08:06.760 Those artist renderings made me look skinny. 0.94

00:08:09.220 Even with her trainer and chef in tow, she still battled her weight, at least for the 1.00

00:08:15.520 first few days.

00:08:17.180 Then she said she gave herself over to, quote, Jesus and the comfort of pie.

00:08:22.460 That's the title of my memoir, by the way.

00:08:24.320 she gained 22 pounds during the six week trial quote my trainer bob green was very upset with

00:08:32.580 me he said it's like you gained it and you're very proud of it i'd say yes i ate pie i ate pie

00:08:39.240 and we had macaroni and cheese with seven different cheeses her co-defendant howard lyman

00:08:45.660 a cattle rancher turned vegetarian was not allowed to mention weight or food to her quote 0.96

00:08:51.520 Her attorneys told me I couldn't talk to her about her diet during the trial. 0.98

00:08:55.980 They felt she was under enough pressure.

00:08:58.940 What are your thoughts? 1.00

00:08:59.720 What kind of fucking gremlin is like, oh, Oprah Winfrey, here's my chance to tell this lady about diets. 0.99

00:09:08.000 It's very clear from what Oprah says about this later that like this is a huge source of anxiety for her. 0.99

00:09:13.400 This is the first time she had been sued in this way.

00:09:16.240 I think she was kind of waking up to the fact of like how big of a deal she was and the

00:09:20.620 fact that she was now going to become a target for these kinds of lawsuits.

00:09:23.680 And it appears that she was very nervous about losing. 0.51

00:09:26.660 But then because she's a public figure and a woman and a black woman, she has this extra

00:09:31.740 layer of anxiety on top of it of like, oh my God, what if I gain weight? 1.00

00:09:35.100 Yeah, totally. 0.93

00:09:35.680 Which is just such a fucking weird thing to throw in there. 1.00

00:09:38.680 And also the fact that she did gain weight and it ends up in her fucking biography. 1.00

00:09:43.240 Yeah. 0.96

00:09:43.480 It's just wild to me how much that has become like sometimes by her own sort of bringing it up, sometimes not how much that has become just a baked in part of her story. Right. That like people are currently pretty incapable of talking about Oprah without talking about her body. Yeah.

00:10:03.660 I feel similarly about the lawsuit as I do about the body stuff, which is essentially like no matter how much of either of those things you get, it's never not going to be stressful.

00:10:14.300 Oh, yeah.

00:10:14.740 Right.

00:10:15.260 Yeah.

00:10:15.440 And the idea that on top of all of that stress, you also need to be like extremely assiduous about what you eat is like, Jesus Christ.

00:10:25.320 Also, I'm glad that she was able to have pie and like let go of this for a little while.

00:10:29.320 It seems like she like deserves it.

00:10:31.000 That mac and cheese sounds good.

00:10:32.820 Normalize it.

00:10:33.420 normalize pie and seven cheeses. Yeah. So the trial starts in January of 1998.

00:10:40.440 They are suing her under the Texas Perishable Foods Act. This is one of these veggie libel

00:10:47.300 laws that passes in this wave of legislation that happens in the early 1990s. It's the first time

00:10:52.680 this law has ever been used. So it's kind of a test case for this Texas veggie libel law and

00:10:59.600 a test case for kind of like these these laws writ large right because they've been on the books for

00:11:04.280 five years now and they've never been used so the the country's legal establishment is watching this

00:11:11.020 to see whether it works and whether like these laws could potentially be overturned it seems

00:11:16.260 like the highest stakes possible test litigation oh yeah if you're gonna sue oprah so to find oprah

00:11:25.880 guilty the lawyers have to prove that oprah and howard this is in the law they have to have stated

00:11:32.460 or implied that a perishable food product was not safe for consumption for the public so they cite

00:11:39.900 oprah's comment that this has put me off eating another burger one of the claims they're contesting

00:11:46.080 is just four words long feeding cows to cows they also focus on howard's comparison of the u.s to

00:11:54.840 the UK. This is from the eventual appeal that is filed years later. It says, branding Lyman an

00:12:01.640 extremist, the cattlemen cite two of his inflammatory statements during the April 16th

00:12:06.320 Oprah Winfrey show. First, the cattlemen challenge as patently false Lyman's assertion that mad cow

00:12:11.880 disease could make AIDS look like the common cold. Second, they maintain that Lyman falsely

00:12:16.920 accused the United States of treating mad cow as a public relations issue as Great Britain did,

00:12:22.420 and failing to take any substantial measures to prevent a mad cow outbreak in this country.

00:12:28.460 They're also suing over the editing. This is actually really interesting. They're saying

00:12:34.420 that the show was deceptively edited because as we talked about last episode, they did in fact

00:12:40.760 have like a somewhat independent USDA genuine expert on mad cow disease and they cut his

00:12:48.240 appearance from eight minutes down to 37 seconds as an audio editor like i i actually agree with

00:12:57.000 the concept that you could very easily libel somebody with editing no question listen easy

00:13:03.240 michael you do it to me every show well we had i don't know if you remember this right like very

00:13:11.380 very early in the show we had like a rough cut we were sort of taking apart pieces of the episode

00:13:16.720 and putting it back together and there was a point where there was some like artifacts of

00:13:20.460 the previous edit and i said at one point i was like well that is why so many kids like die in

00:13:25.780 road accidents in america and then you cackled for like two minutes which was just like it was

00:13:31.320 like i had cut out something else there like a joke but because i had like children dying and

00:13:36.660 then you laughing it was like wow aubrey's a monster this is also michael i'm so glad you 0.98

00:13:42.600 bring this up we're now back in bachelor land this is what the bachelor does all the damn time 0.63

00:13:47.120 you got a villain edit in your season but they want to bring you back as the bachelor congratulations 0.55

00:13:52.900 you're going on bachelor in paradise you're about to get the best edit possible yeah nick vile this

00:13:58.680 is why i'm so nervous about people having parasocial relationships with us because i i keep wanting to 0.89

00:14:02.760 stress that like i'm a normal person who's like a dick sometimes and i don't want you to experience 0.93

00:14:06.560 that as a betrayal yeah that's right that's right no mike mike has bad takes and is sometimes a prick 0.89

00:14:11.640 podcasters they're just like us exactly so the lawsuit is mostly over these false claims and it

00:14:21.800 it really rests on this claim that howard lyman made that america is treating mad cow disease

00:14:28.200 like britain right it's basically treating it like a public relations issue rather than like

00:14:33.580 a public health issue so for you and i to adjudicate whether this claim has any merit

00:14:40.360 we need to talk for the next two hours about the history of mad cow disease.

00:14:46.160 Delightful. Can't wait. Rotting brains. Let's go.

00:14:48.920 Speaking of which, what do you remember about mad cow, like just as a disease, as a condition from last week?

00:14:55.360 What I remember is feeling very upset by the effects of it.

00:14:58.640 It's very upsetting.

00:14:59.240 It's really upsetting.

00:15:01.100 It essentially like creates holes in your brain. Am I remembering that right?

00:15:06.760 yeah the actual name of it is bovine spongiform encephalopathy spongiform yeah and that's because 0.99

00:15:14.700 it like your brain looks like a fucking sponge yes it's disgusting i under it that's a very 0.96

00:15:19.240 effective name in terms of conveying what happens uh and that it's like degenerative and pretty 0.99

00:15:25.380 rapidly degenerative is that right yeah so it's it lives in your body for a very long incubation

00:15:31.080 period of years and then you're dead within a year yeah that seems horrible so the weird thing

00:15:37.420 about this condition is that it takes place in almost all mammal species so you can find it in

00:15:44.420 like minks and in elks it's called chronic wasting disease in sheep it's called scrapey which is a

00:15:51.900 great disease name i like diseases that sound like diseases that sounds like cropsy yeah i mean that

00:15:56.800 sounds like an urban legend bad guy in humans it's called creutzfeld jacob disease there are

00:16:03.540 these little things in your like nerve cells mostly in your brain and your spine called prions

00:16:09.400 and we don't really know what they do the the current theory apparently is that they like help

00:16:15.080 your brain communicate with itself and communicate with your nervous system but they're all over the

00:16:20.040 place and they kind of propagate themselves by like folding they're like constantly folding into

00:16:23.700 these like three-dimensional shapes and every once in a while this is extremely rare they get

00:16:29.340 like an error message like a little 404 and they like fuck up and then they like fold in on

00:16:34.360 themselves and like capture the little error message and start repeating the error message 0.74

00:16:39.140 holy the the kind of traditional version of it is called like spontaneous courtsville jacob disease 0.64

00:16:45.780 and like it just fucking happens in your brain and then it starts like propagating itself and 0.73

00:16:50.760 then you start to get these awful symptoms which are very similar to dementia at first and so it 0.99

00:16:56.660 mostly happens in older people the median age of onset is 66 the bad news is that there's no way

00:17:04.660 of testing for it before you get symptoms and there's no treatment for it but the the good news

00:17:10.460 is that it's it's very difficult to spread so you know it's not airborne it it doesn't come out in

00:17:16.140 your poo or your pee or any of your fluids like it's once one person gets it they just sort of

00:17:21.700 get it spontaneously and then they die jesus there's a couple instances of cannibal tribes

00:17:29.940 like getting it where like you can spread it from one person to the other if you're like eating

00:17:33.740 someone else's brain but again it's you know it's fairly rare behavior in mammals to like eat an

00:17:39.460 entire carcass of another thing so luckily it can't really become a pandemic it's just like

00:17:44.320 something unbelievably unfortunate that like happens to an individual basically yeah but what

00:17:49.380 is important about the mad cow outbreak of 1996 specifically is that it had never been seen in

00:17:55.440 cows before so we knew that it was in sheep we also knew that humans cannot get it from sheep

00:18:01.700 humans can eat the meat humans don't eat a lot of sheep brains but apparently even if you do

00:18:06.620 humans don't get it from sheep and other animals don't get it from sheep interesting so the first

00:18:12.160 case that is documented in a cow is in 1986 in the uk this this cow was acting really weird and like

00:18:20.940 cows cows haven't really done this before like cows can get rabies apparently but like rabies

00:18:25.900 has very specific symptoms and a farmer's like oh these this doesn't really seem like rabies and

00:18:31.380 eventually somebody tests the brain of the cow after it dies and is like oh this is spongy as 0.99

00:18:35.380 fuck. I think we have a new thing on our hands. And then after they identify the first couple 0.99

00:18:42.320 cases, they start testing for it more widely. And it's just galloping throughout the cattle

00:18:49.440 industry. So by the end of 1988, there's 95 confirmed cases on 80 farms. By 1989, there's

00:18:57.700 2200 cases by 1990 there's 10 000 cases and by 1991 there's 24 000 cases good god there are many

00:19:07.780 many many things written about the botched uk government response to the mad cow epidemic and

00:19:14.420 like i i read three books about this i read the parliamentary inquiry that is eventually published

00:19:20.420 about like every single step along the way that like they fucked up so the first thing that the 0.89

00:19:25.700 british government fucked up in responding to this is they realized what they had on their hands 0.94

00:19:29.400 in march of 1987 but they didn't announce it until may so like this was spreading within the cow 0.97

00:19:36.420 population and like they didn't tell farmers like they didn't tell people that this was happening

00:19:41.420 basically yeah that stuff is always so tricky right but like you don't want people to panic

00:19:46.940 but also like withholding information seems like a real bad practice so fairly early like almost

00:19:55.960 immediately the uk government figures out that like this has to be spreading through cows eating

00:20:01.980 cow brains like that's the only way we know that animals can get this is eating their own species 0.95

00:20:07.460 brains and like spinal cords and shit and so like they look around the cattle industry and they're 0.93

00:20:12.060 like oh yeah it's a fairly common practice for cattle to be ground up and turned into this like 0.77

00:20:16.280 bone meal protein stuff that they give other cows. So it's like they know relatively quickly

00:20:21.380 like how this is spreading. So it's not until June of 1988, nearly two years after they find

00:20:26.900 the first case, that they ban the practice of feeding bone meal to cows. And this is so baffling

00:20:34.300 to me. They give them a grace period. So they announce it in June, but they're like, oh,

00:20:39.180 you don't have to implement it until like five weeks later in July. But like this is like

00:20:43.980 poisonous, like they're feeding poisonous food to other cows. It feels a little bit like the time

00:20:50.740 when, uh, very early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were like, uh, N95 masks don't even

00:20:58.820 work. And it was just so that there were enough for healthcare providers versus being like, Hey,

00:21:04.900 it's most important that the people who are exposed to this the most have the protection

00:21:09.080 that they need. So we're putting them over here. Right. Like this feels like it's in the same

00:21:13.700 neighborhood of like boy i see how you got here but like reorganize your principles here reorganize

00:21:22.340 your priorities this is not the way to do it there's also a weird naivete about how farmers

00:21:28.840 are going to react to this so they basically in 1988 tell farmers like you can't use this stuff

00:21:33.920 anymore right it's it's poison don't feed it to your cows anymore but they don't give them any

00:21:37.980 compensation what so the farmers are like well i've spent tens of thousands of pounds on food

00:21:43.880 like cows need a lot of food this is like a fairly sizable industry this like protein meal that

00:21:50.680 they're making and it's like oh yeah like all of that is worthless bye yeah and famously a pretty

00:21:57.300 low margin business for farmers and ranchers like they're not exactly like making bank it also just

00:22:04.680 like totally destroyed trust between the government and the farmers because the farmers were like well 0.96

00:22:08.620 fuck you you're just telling me not to use this stuff and like you're not giving me any compensation 0.97

00:22:13.200 it feels really insulting so a lot of the farmers just kept using it until their supplies were gone 1.00

00:22:17.060 and this is another super duper botched government response thing the uk government didn't ban

00:22:23.400 exports what of the bone meal so this is another thing that like they're selling it to like french

00:22:28.340 farmers swiss farmers belgian farmers this is like part of the industry so like all of the cases of

00:22:34.500 mad cow that we get in europe in the early years of this are from like french cows eating british 0.92

00:22:41.520 bone meal oh interesting they also fucked up the compensation in telling farmers to destroy

00:22:49.540 their herds as well so the government bans all this poisonous food they also tell farmers

00:22:56.920 that they have to kill any cows that have like symptoms of mad cow but they have this whole

00:23:03.200 compensation scheme where any cow that you kill, like a normal cow, they pay you 100% of the value

00:23:11.000 of the cow. However, if the cow has mad cow disease, they only pay you 50% of the value of

00:23:17.380 the cow. The logic, I guess, is like, well, it has mad cow, so it gets worth less, so we shouldn't

00:23:21.640 be paying as much. But the problem is, as soon as farmers start to see symptoms in their cows of

00:23:27.100 mad cow disease, they kill the cow and grind it up and put it in the food. They slaughter it,

00:23:33.100 they sell it they get rid of it because it's about to lose half of its fucking value i remember uh 0.99

00:23:38.340 growing up like my dad's a pilot and he would talk about uh how if you had a mental health 0.98

00:23:47.140 diagnosis on the books you would be grounded as a pilot you couldn't fly oh yeah yeah yeah so you

00:23:52.900 just don't get diagnosed right which just meant there were like a bunch of people with like

00:23:57.020 untreated and undiagnosed mental illnesses. And it just sort of disincentivized like

00:24:02.000 a generation or more of pilots from like seeking mental health care that they may have really

00:24:07.640 needed. Yeah, it's super predictable. I mean, this is like really 101 stuff. Yeah. The one

00:24:15.040 non botched government response that they did is they also assign researchers to find out how this

00:24:21.900 started. So there's actually like a fairly interesting mystery that they have to figure

00:24:26.520 out. They know that mad cow disease is spreading through this practice of grinding up cows and

00:24:32.400 feeding it to other cows. Cows eat cow brains. That's how they get mad cow, right? They know

00:24:36.340 that's happening. However, this practice is very widespread. Like America does it. Every country

00:24:43.200 in Europe does it. This is like a pretty well entrenched part of the cattle industry by this

00:24:47.760 point. And in Britain, they've been doing this since the 1920s. This is actually like something

00:24:52.180 that like Oprah is kind of reacting to and like the rest of the public is reacting to.

00:24:56.520 It's like, oh, we're doing this regularly?

00:24:58.860 And the whole cattle industry is like, yeah, you don't want to think about, like, the conditions under which your beef is produced.

00:25:04.300 But, like, yeah, there's a lot of, like, waste products when you kill a cow.

00:25:08.380 And, like, we're going to try to do something with those waste products.

00:25:11.340 So it's like, okay, well, then why is mad cow happening in Britain and why is it happening now?

00:25:19.100 So this is actually pretty interesting.

00:25:21.200 they managed to triangulate the source of the outbreak based on all these like incubation

00:25:26.680 periods and when the cows are getting it, where the cows are getting it. They trace it back to

00:25:31.940 the winter of 1981 to 1982. Something changed in that winter to start spreading mad cow throughout

00:25:40.900 the cow population. So there's a couple different factors that appear to have led to this. The first

00:25:46.920 is the increasing use of this bone meal protein stuff that basically cows need a lot of protein

00:25:53.900 to grow up and get like big muscles. This is like just like human beings. We all need protein.

00:25:59.100 And this is one of the cheap ways to produce protein is like grind up meal and like feed it

00:26:04.200 to cows. And so there's a weird thing that like the price of like soybeans and other, you know,

00:26:11.180 natural forms of protein spiked that winter. So in the winter of 1981, the percentage of cow feed

00:26:21.400 that was this bone meal went from 1% to 5%, which was the highest in Europe. No other country was

00:26:29.420 using that much bone meal. There was also a change in the way that they create bone meal.

00:26:35.500 so i don't know if this is a trigger warning but if you're eating right now stop eating this is 0.73

00:26:41.500 like this is so fucking gross if you've been eating beef in particular for any of this maybe 0.93

00:26:46.380 yeah maybe maybe finish your lunch and then then come back to us in a couple hours this is so 0.99

00:26:52.580 fucking gross aubrey but we have to talk about it so the way that this bone meal protein stuff 0.92

00:26:58.000 works is they basically take like cow carcasses and oftentimes they'll throw in other animals too 0.99

00:27:03.140 like other sort of farm animals that are around they grind them all up into this kind of like

00:27:09.180 flop and so there's all these industrial processes to separate the fat in that slop from the protein

00:27:16.420 and what's super weird is the the fat part is actually very valuable this is like beef tallow

00:27:22.040 and it's like an industrial additive that like they use it in cosmetics they use it in like

00:27:28.200 printing money like it's part of plastics i believe uh famously it was what gave mcdonald's

00:27:34.320 fries their flavor for years and years and years right this is like a a very refined industrial

00:27:40.800 process to like separate out the constituent parts of this like gross animal slop and as the industry

00:27:48.060 was getting bigger and consolidating especially in the 1970s in britain they switched from

00:27:55.340 creating this bone meal in batches, like you do a bunch of tons of it at once, to doing it

00:28:00.560 continuously. So they have like a conveyor belt that does it just all the time. And as part of

00:28:05.520 that process, they weren't heating the bone meal up as high. So it used to be that they were heating

00:28:11.500 it to like 220 degrees and that dropped to like 180 degrees or something like that. They just

00:28:16.560 weren't getting it up to as high temperatures and keeping it at those high temperatures for as long

00:28:21.560 when they switched to this new process.

00:28:23.340 There was also a really interesting change in processing

00:28:26.180 that it used to be that, you know, 0.99

00:28:28.740 because tallow is so much more valuable than this like protein shit, 0.99

00:28:33.300 they would use chemical solvents. 0.98

00:28:35.640 So after they heated it up,

00:28:37.180 they would blast it with these like weird chemicals

00:28:38.960 to kind of dissolve the fat

00:28:40.540 and then they could reconstitute it through other chemical processes later.

00:28:44.340 But the industry started increasingly relying on that in the 1970s

00:28:48.940 And then there were some like really grisly fires and explosions at these rendering plants

00:28:55.060 because the solvents that they were using were extremely dangerous.

00:28:58.180 Boy, oh boy.

00:28:58.700 So as like an occupational health and safety thing, they phased out these solvents.

00:29:03.440 I will say I'm glad to hear that part.

00:29:06.820 I feel generally wary of conversations about like the gross nature of food production.

00:29:14.420 Not because we shouldn't, those aren't things we should talk about,

00:29:17.580 but because it's so quickly tips into like that bread is made out of the same thing as yoga mats

00:29:23.140 are made out of sort of sensationalized claims that are designed to squick people out and make

00:29:28.820 them think that their food is dangerous when like water is a thing that's used in making bread and

00:29:34.900 yoga mats right like there are plenty of things that sort of go in both categories but from an

00:29:40.240 occupational safety standpoint that feels like a place where we are generally like asleep at the

00:29:46.240 wheel as consumers, right? Like there's like very little discussion of like, what is the safety of

00:29:52.520 farm workers picking your vegetables and fruits? What is the safety level of folks who are sort of

00:29:58.360 working on this process? So I'm like, very glad to hear that the occupational safety part sort of

00:30:04.540 wins the day. It's a really weird, like perfect storm of like, the price of international like

00:30:11.380 fish meal production went up and they reduced the heat by like a little bit in these processes and

00:30:20.880 the protein that they were feeding the cows went from like 5% fat to 12% fat and like none of these

00:30:28.920 things on their own seem like that big of a deal right they're like little tweaks okay like these

00:30:33.500 are the little things that happen in industrial processes all the time and like none of us ever

00:30:37.660 find out about it's like oh okay just like a little a little tiny practice it doesn't really

00:30:41.140 make any big difference but all of these things together because the heat wasn't as high and fat

00:30:48.240 protects microorganisms from heat so the fat produced a barrier around like the protein stuff

00:30:54.920 that meant that it it wasn't getting heated to the same temperatures so basically there was some

00:31:00.440 process in place to destroy all of the prions and like it just fell below the threshold at which it

00:31:07.520 could get rid of all the prions and it left a couple of the prions in the little like protein 0.56

00:31:12.380 cakes also these cakes sound fucking disgusting apparently i i read a really good book called

00:31:17.980 deadly feasts by ridger rhodes about like how all this happened and he described them as scab 0.99

00:31:23.840 colored oh and said that they just like smell like a dead body so just like fucking gross these 0.99

00:31:30.420 like little patty cakes of like flesh stuff that you feed to fucking cows i really love that a 0.99

00:31:38.280 running theme of this show is you being like these are the things that are too gross for me and i can't 0.98

00:31:45.760 talk about it and then you bring episodes and then i share them and then i have to tell other people

00:31:51.900 about them to share my gross doubtness well and then you get like a wave for however long of like

00:31:58.240 social media response and further prompts are like check this out yeah totally yeah it's a very

00:32:06.520 particular hell of your own making bud so basically by the 1980s they've kind of figured out what

00:32:13.860 happened there's still it's actually very interesting there's still debate about where

00:32:18.980 like the first case came from so one theory the theory in the parliamentary inquiry is that just

00:32:25.880 like a cow got it one day the same way humans do it's like prions are like doing their little folds

00:32:31.460 and then there's like a little 404 that gets folded into the cow brain and the cow gets ground

00:32:36.080 up and fed to other cows and so on right that's one theory the other theory is that it was a

00:32:41.900 variant of scrapie because it was relatively widespread in sheep and everyone thought that

00:32:49.880 other animals couldn't get it from sheep they were grinding up sheep in these like sheep parts

00:32:54.820 in this slop stuff too and that's how it got into the feed for the cows so that is still a mystery

00:33:02.360 like the actual origin point like the big bang of all of this but once you start having these like

00:33:08.800 diseased cow brains in the food because you've had so much industrial consolidation you're making

00:33:14.980 this in like huge batches right so one infected cow goes into like a huge batch and then gets

00:33:21.680 spread out to like hundreds of farms. So that's how this ended up spreading like underneath

00:33:26.740 everybody's radar throughout the entire country in the early 1980s. So what Howard Lyman said on

00:33:33.920 Oprah that everyone's going to fight about in Texas in another decade is that the British

00:33:39.480 government essentially treated this as a public relations problem and not as like a threat to

00:33:44.480 human health and that is on some level true because before this there had never been a case

00:33:51.940 where a version of mad cow had spread from animals to humans it is true that like when you look at

00:33:59.780 the government response the government was basically seeing this as like an animal disease

00:34:03.880 and was trying to protect the british cattle industry but they weren't doing this it's not

00:34:09.600 like there was some like flashing red light like this is about to jump to humans at any time there

00:34:13.520 actual scientists and like specialists in this who were like, no, no, we've been eating sheep 0.70

00:34:18.380 with scrapie for centuries. We've never gotten scrapie in humans. Right. So they're calibrated

00:34:22.920 to like completely the wrong scale of thinking and they're approaching an incomplete list of

00:34:30.320 like institutions that need to be engaged and all kinds of stuff. Right. Like, so if you're focused

00:34:36.140 on the wrong problem from jump or a small fraction of the total problem from jump, like, of course,

00:34:43.080 you're going to come up with solutions that don't fix the whole thing if you don't know the whole

00:34:46.400 thing exists yeah like given the information that they had at the time yeah this really wasn't on 0.69

00:34:51.360 anybody's radar and there was this is like one of the most fucked up things i've ever read

00:34:55.600 in 1985 there there were also all these other studies where people had kind of tried spreading 0.78

00:35:02.540 prions from like one species to another or even within the same species so in 1985 there's an

00:35:11.120 article on like cannibal hamsters hamsters hamster brains what and they didn't get like

00:35:18.720 hamster spongiform encephalitis when you say hang on we got to unpack cannibal hamsters

00:35:24.720 you don't get to just skate by cannibal hamsters i'm assuming that this is a lab experiment

00:35:33.220 right where hamsters are being fed there's not like a subset of hamsters that are like

00:35:39.840 Hannibal hamsters hamsters there was a plane crash and the hamsters had to resort to eating

00:35:46.300 one another that makes more sense to me and I feel uh relieved and very sad for those hamsters that

00:35:52.660 got fed hamster brains that seems really disturbing but glad to know that I can just love my unproblematic

00:35:58.960 fave hamsters again but yeah at the time the conventional wisdom was that like even if cows

00:36:05.740 were eating cow brains, you would need like a lot of brain material for this to spread from one

00:36:11.380 animal to the other. And for whatever reason, that turns out not to be true for cows. So there's this

00:36:16.560 big freak out in the 1980s, but it hasn't really crossed over to the public yet. There's news

00:36:22.720 stories. It's a big deal, but it's kind of cast as like an agricultural issue, right? Like there's

00:36:28.020 this weird disease in cows, but the public isn't super duper tracking this. So after this initial

00:36:34.240 flurry a couple years go by and then in 1990 there is a cat named max who dies of mad cow disease

00:36:46.060 okay it appears that the cat became infected from eating cat food that had like ground up

00:36:54.760 cow brains in it oh my god and it's it first of all it's like kind of scary that mad cow is

00:37:01.540 spreading from one species to another which like they said couldn't happen right and then also 0.99

00:37:08.000 there's like just like oprah you're like oh wait we're all eating fucking cow brains hang on 0.95

00:37:12.780 totally it's like gross to think about cat food didn't see it coming but of course this kicks off 0.97

00:37:19.760 a much larger wave of panic than there had been just when like cows had it this is also when we

00:37:25.920 actually get the coining of the term mad cow which was something the british tabloids came up with

00:37:30.440 It has British tabloid written all over it, that is for sure.

00:37:33.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:34.280 It also fits very well in headlines.

00:37:36.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:36.900 But what's amazing to me, right, is the British tabloids who you know I hate with, like, the depths of my heart.

00:37:44.300 Like, I loathe British tabloids.

00:37:46.800 Yes.

00:37:47.220 But this is a very weird case for me because, you know, I've looked into a million moral panics at this point.

00:37:53.080 and they all have kind of like the same structure of you know this especially this tabloid media

00:37:58.000 like whipping up a bunch of fears about something that is fake right the british tabloids at this

00:38:03.580 time start whipping up a panic about mad cow and they're like it could spread to humans 0.86

00:38:09.060 and like they're fucking right but this is like a stopped clock is right twice a day right like 0.93

00:38:16.380 funny to me by accident slash like compulsive sensationalization of things that they hit on 0.96

00:38:23.980 this not because they're like observing anything right and they're they're quoting these like

00:38:29.180 crank doctors who are like the the medical establishment doesn't want you to know which

00:38:33.880 is true that's accurate like the medical establishment was like super head in the sand

00:38:40.300 about the possibility of this spreading to humans and like the government at this point 0.90

00:38:47.020 started doing all kinds of like pr shit like uh the minister of agriculture went on tv and fed his 0.98

00:38:53.320 daughter a hamburger as like a pr move to be like look how safe the beef is like everyone should 0.99

00:38:58.880 stop slandering beef and like his daughter's fine it's all fine but like it was true that the

00:39:05.780 government was doing like i wouldn't say a cover-up but the government was definitely doing a lot of

00:39:09.980 like pro beef propaganda at the time god i just feel like our next episode you're gonna be like

00:39:15.700 there was a bat boy and he did i know exactly from a chicago lab this is what's so funny is

00:39:22.160 because like this has all of the hallmarks of a moral panic right if you looked at this structurally 0.99

00:39:27.680 right there's like some pseudoscience stuff there's like taking you know a small number of

00:39:32.760 cases and blowing them up into these disaster scenarios but like it happened it then happens

00:39:39.100 So for the first time ever, kudos to the Daily Mail for getting it right.

00:39:45.920 Jesus Christ.

00:39:47.280 It's bleak.

00:39:48.240 Yeah.

00:39:48.740 So then a couple more years go by after the cat cow panic kind of dies down.

00:39:55.160 We then get to 1993, which is when the first human cases start to show up.

00:40:02.340 So there's a farmer who one of his cows had been diagnosed with mad cow and like he ended

00:40:10.520 up slaughtering a bunch of his cows early and then he starts getting this like weird

00:40:15.340 dementia and people are like, uh, this feels weird.

00:40:20.840 But to my knowledge, that has never actually been confirmed as a case of mad cow.

00:40:25.060 It could be and it could just be like a really unlucky guy who happened to get dementia really

00:40:29.480 early.

00:40:29.820 We don't know yet.

00:40:30.540 boy oh boy i had an encounter a couple weeks ago with someone who was like i had covid before they

00:40:35.800 knew what it was and i was like oh in like january or something and this person was like

00:40:40.620 no in like 2017 and i was like oh yeah no it hadn't leaked from the lab yet

00:40:46.660 also in 1993 there's a little girl named vicky rimmer who starts getting these weird symptoms

00:40:53.520 at the age of 15 and like her grandmother this is actually a really interesting example of like

00:41:00.180 something that is usually bad but is true in this case her grandmother had been reading the tabloids

00:41:06.480 and her grandmother was like i think this is mad cow and she goes to the tabloids and tabloids are

00:41:12.860 like mad cow and little girl and start whipping up panic again under any other circumstance i'd be 0.97

00:41:18.480 like this is very irresponsible but it's fucking true it has now been confirmed that this little 0.98

00:41:23.640 girl had mad cow boy oh boy in 1994 there's a 15 year old girl who has it in 1995 there's another 0.95

00:41:32.600 teenager who has it and so after a couple of these cases start trickling out it becomes clear that

00:41:39.200 something is happening and so on march 20th 1996 the british government announces that there have

00:41:47.080 been 10 cases of human mad cow disease do they have any sense of why so many teenagers it's

00:41:53.980 actually to this day it's not clear there appears to be some weird like genetic marker that makes

00:42:00.660 some people susceptible to it and not others but it's it's not clear to me why it's happening in

00:42:05.900 children although the median age of these 10 cases is 28 it's also really interesting i actually

00:42:12.480 spent like a long time trying to figure out like where these cases originated right like what did

00:42:17.100 they eat to give them mad cow right but like you can't really trace it back because it's been

00:42:22.200 seven years since these people ate the contaminated beef right we've talked on the show about like

00:42:27.200 how bad people are at self-reporting data of like what they ate today like then add seven years

00:42:35.180 it's not getting better and it's like the only thing you could even do to investigate is like

00:42:39.580 well did you eat beef between like 1987 and 1989 like that's as good as you can do and this

00:42:46.460 incubation period also foments another like much more mainstream wave of panic i mean this is when

00:42:52.120 oprah finds out about it this is when the rest of the world finds out about it i mean this is

00:42:55.060 a huge deal that it's like okay there's tainted beef that has a 100 fatality rate like eight

00:43:02.300 years later like that's fucking terrifying yeah totally this is also when we get the you know of

00:43:09.200 the tabloids now go into overdrive and there's various predictions of how many people will die 0.70

00:43:14.040 the highest estimate is 500 000 people jesus god eventually it's it's 177 people so like this

00:43:21.980 this model is like way fucking out there but it's like yeah you start counting up the number of

00:43:27.380 people who eat beef yeah totally totally like the rest of the world kind of like kicks into action 0.76

00:43:32.060 there's something very funny that the eu has a ban on british beef in place for 10 years but even

00:43:38.780 after they lift it france just keeps the ban in place like informally even though that's illegal

00:43:43.600 under like you rules france is like no no we got we've got problems with the british

00:43:48.120 we're gonna keep this feels very france just like we feel like it what are you gonna do about it

00:43:55.040 yeah we're just not gonna tell you guys about it we never liked you anyway yeah so we're now going

00:44:00.440 to do back to amarillo texas it's january 1998 again it's a weird timeline because the mad cow

00:44:08.920 panic in america really like peaked in 1996 when oprah was doing her episode and then fell pretty

00:44:14.420 quickly right once people figured out that like there had never been a case of mad cow in america

00:44:18.860 and there was no human case of mad cow in america ever either and like this remained an extremely

00:44:25.380 British phenomenon. Like to this day, it's like, you know, 140,000 cattle in Britain were diagnosed

00:44:31.760 with mad cow. And in Portugal, it's like 200. In France, it's like 150. It's like really isolated

00:44:38.820 outside of Britain. So by the time the trial starts, like almost two years later, the country's

00:44:45.440 kind of over mad cow. Right. And if it's unique to this one sort of industry in this one country,

00:44:52.080 then like you figure out like if you're not living in the uk right like you figure out that

00:44:59.940 you can sort of like let go of some of that anxiety so the trial itself begins oprah and

00:45:07.580 howard lyman both eventually end up taking the stand oprah testified for three days

00:45:12.040 i couldn't find trial transcripts which is really annoying i wanted to like do like a dramatic

00:45:17.460 reading of the testimony all i know is from what has been included in like the appeals and the

00:45:22.880 various court decisions and media reports howard lyman says the first question they asked him

00:45:28.760 when he got onto the stand was like are you a vegetarian yes or no like they were they were

00:45:33.980 casting him as like an animal rights extremist it's like they're playing to the amarillo crowd

00:45:38.500 yeah totally aha but then okay i'm just gonna like spoil this they really never had a chance

00:45:45.780 of winning this lawsuit really they have to prove a series of things to win the lawsuit so a lot of

00:45:52.640 the trial rests on the fact that oprah like her show caused this huge drop in cattle prices in

00:46:02.380 april of 1996 the prosecution calls like traitors they call an economist who's like i see no other

00:46:11.000 structural reasons why the price of beef would have fallen at that time but then it's really

00:46:17.280 hard to prove this stuff right like why does the price of a commodity fall at a particular time

00:46:22.420 well is oprah's show in there maybe but to get damages they have to show that she was basically

00:46:30.280 single-handedly responsible for it and cattle prices were down for 11 weeks so somehow they

00:46:36.040 have to prove that oprah's show was like so powerful yeah that people stopped eating beef

00:46:41.300 for three months yeah totally like honestly i buy it oprah was extremely influential at that time

00:46:49.560 i actually do too honestly yeah but like to prove it again this is like part of what we come up

00:46:55.200 against in nutrition research all the time right in order to prove this thing you have to rule out

00:47:01.060 every other possible thing that could cause this. And that's going to be really hard to do when

00:47:07.160 there is like a legitimate public health issue at play. People are getting this news from more

00:47:12.820 than just Oprah. So you have to prove it was Oprah and not 60 Minutes or Good Morning America

00:47:18.940 or The Today Show or whoever else covered it. This is what's so weird to me. It's like if you

00:47:23.240 Google around, you can find a bunch of articles from the time being like, could Mad Cow happen

00:47:28.080 here you know some of them are more responsible than others but like panic about mad cow spreading

00:47:33.320 to the u.s was very widespread it's something the entire media was doing it's not like oprah

00:47:37.300 like went out on a limb with this segment right yeah there's also there the defense calls various

00:47:43.520 other economists who say that like prices of beef had actually been falling for a while and they

00:47:51.200 call this guy to do this sort of like rapid fire questions like isn't it true that demand in asia

00:47:57.600 was falling at that time and isn't it true that there was more supply coming out of slaughterhouses

00:48:03.240 at that time like there's all these kind of supply and demand things that again like normal people

00:48:08.020 never really think about but like all of these things are kind of what these prices are really

00:48:12.160 based on is like supply and demand like kind of intrinsic factors yeah and they're like well

00:48:16.100 there's all this kind of other stuff happening at the time and it's it's really hard to put all of

00:48:21.800 this at the feet of oprah i i agree with you i think that like she had something to do with it

00:48:26.400 like the reputation of beef fell, but there were also like children dying in the United Kingdom 0.99

00:48:32.880 from eating fucking beef. Yeah. So there's also like enough panic in the population at large 1.00

00:48:38.700 that like, yeah, if people, if children are dying from eating something, people are going to stop

00:48:43.080 eating it for a while. And like, I get that that sucks for your industry and like, it's unfair,

00:48:47.080 but like, you can't blame any one media figure for that. Yeah, totally. I mean, I feel similarly,

00:48:53.300 honestly about the like it feels like there's been an uptick in the last few years in people

00:48:59.060 like holding oprah personally responsible for like dr oz and dr phil and all of that kind of stuff

00:49:05.620 absolutely she played an influential role there and there is some like accountability to be had

00:49:11.160 there yeah but not more than there is for those guys themselves yeah exactly she's like a huge

00:49:18.420 cultural force and like absolutely there's more to talk about here but again like the degree to

00:49:25.400 which people like come after her personally for the sort of like big cultural waves that sometimes

00:49:33.220 she starts and sometimes she rides you know seems disproportionate to me and also even under this

00:49:40.320 lower standard they still have to prove that oprah's statements and howard lyman's statements

00:49:45.460 were false and that they knew that they were false so that's a pretty fucking high bar right

00:49:52.140 and if you look at the actual statements that they're accusing oprah and howard of saying

00:49:59.240 you know oprah says it stopped me cold from eating another burger well that's not a factual

00:50:04.300 statement false no it didn't i saw you eat beef on your show we talked last episode about how like

00:50:09.240 opinions are protected and then howard lyman's you know he says this disease could make aids look

00:50:15.180 like the common cold well that's a prediction about the future that that's like me saying like

00:50:19.380 well if self-driving cars become normal lots of bikers are gonna get murdered in traffic which 0.86

00:50:24.000 is fucking true by the way but also like that that's an opinion that's my prediction of the 0.75

00:50:27.840 future that's not a fact it's very obvious from the structure of that that like it's it's an 0.94

00:50:32.760 opinion well and also it's a figure of speech right x will make y look like z yeah he's not

00:50:37.880 giving it enough legs for you to like have a factual statement to debunk right this feels a

00:50:44.360 little bit like um in courtroom dramas when they'll like have a witness on the stand and be

00:50:50.140 like didn't you say you'd do anything to be on this tv show and like it's treated as this big

00:50:56.920 smoking gun moment and i'm like honestly like i said i would kill for a grilled cheese yesterday

00:51:02.300 like people don't let's not it sort of feels like the same thing with howard's claim that the u.s

00:51:09.020 is treating this like a public relations issue, just like Britain did. You could say that that's

00:51:14.480 closer to a factual claim than I'll never eat beef again. But it also very firmly falls into

00:51:21.240 the category of analysis to me. It's not a straightforwardly factual claim. And it's also

00:51:27.940 not straightforwardly false. One of the things that Howard mentioned on the Oprah show is that

00:51:33.320 the meat industry instituted a voluntary ban on putting brains and spines in these like protein

00:51:41.920 patty cakes but the u.s government didn't make it mandatory and what he's saying is that the u.s

00:51:47.340 government is treating this like a pr issue not a threat to human health and like maybe you disagree

00:51:52.760 with that or maybe you would put it differently but it's not just like a clear-cut factual statement

00:51:58.200 and it's not in a clear-cut way wrong.

00:52:01.440 Oprah talks later about how her entire strategy

00:52:04.460 was basically making this a trial about free speech, right?

00:52:07.660 They talked about like the slippery slope.

00:52:09.520 If my show gets busted for asking questions

00:52:12.860 about the safety of beef,

00:52:13.840 think about all of the other shows

00:52:16.080 that will have this huge chilling effect

00:52:17.480 throughout the entire journalism industry.

00:52:19.560 So in Kitty Kelly's biography,

00:52:22.840 she has a description of Oprah testifying.

00:52:27.000 She says, after repetitive questioning, she leaned into the microphone and in a commanding

00:52:32.120 voice said, I provide a forum for people to express their opinions.

00:52:35.960 We're allowed to do this in the United States of America.

00:52:38.740 I come from a people who have struggled and died in order to have a voice in this country

00:52:42.560 and I refuse to be muzzled.

00:52:44.680 Like, that's a strong argument.

00:52:46.580 Yeah, it totally is.

00:52:47.700 And also that's like a strength of sort of speech in her own defense that you don't often

00:52:54.320 hear from Oprah, right?

00:52:56.360 Like she'll tackle issues that way. 1.00

00:52:58.740 She'll do all kinds of stuff.

00:52:59.720 But like, maybe this is just like a sign of my like age and generation.

00:53:04.540 But I don't remember hearing Oprah talk in those terms about herself.

00:53:10.400 She also says, this is also from the Kitty Kelly biography.

00:53:13.720 When she was asked about her integrity, she said, I am a black woman in America.

00:53:17.660 Having gotten here, believing in a power greater than myself, I cannot be bought.

00:53:21.840 I answer to the spirit of God that lives in us all.

00:53:24.300 she said her influence was not enough to drive americans away from beef if i had that kind of

00:53:29.120 power she said i'd go on the air and heal people this is a tricky one because she is like

00:53:34.120 extraordinarily influential at this point in her life and career but again to trace all of

00:53:42.380 this sort of like industry-wide impact back to just her is bonkers i think that she's 0.98

00:53:49.420 she's fundamentally making like kind of a chicken shit defense throughout the trial 0.96

00:53:53.840 she keeps saying like well i'm not a journalist like you can't you can't expect me to have the 0.98

00:53:58.200 the same standards as like a sort of traditional journalist like i'm an entertainment talk show

00:54:02.600 and then she also hides behind this like extremely gwyneth defense of like i'm just asking questions 0.91

00:54:08.380 that is chicken shit oprah has huge influence whether or not you say go out and buy this book 0.98

00:54:13.960 please if you say this book is good people are gonna go buy the fucking book right if you say 1.00

00:54:18.020 Beef is bad. 0.99

00:54:18.960 People are going to stop buying beef. 0.99

00:54:20.220 Like, come the fuck on, right? 0.97

00:54:21.760 But then also, you don't want to have a legal regime where any time you say, driving a Honda 1.00

00:54:28.440 sucks, and then like fucking Honda sues you. 0.98

00:54:31.560 And so if that becomes the legal standard, then like the chilling effect would be profound, 1.00

00:54:37.180 right?

00:54:37.400 If you just can't even, as much as I hate to use the term, ask questions about whether

00:54:42.360 a product is harming us.

00:54:43.960 so it's like oprah should not have done this but also the cattlemen should not have done this

00:54:48.320 either this is an esh situation michael infowars hobbs just asking questions i think it's important

00:54:55.380 to be able to ask the tough questions it's tricky because it's like an argument that like fox news

00:55:01.340 makes too right to be like it's not news it's opinion in this case i take her point about the

00:55:08.260 sort of chilling effect on journalism. And I don't think that's wrong. Like journalists are

00:55:13.860 historically not the most moneyed among us. So if you take on a particularly rich or powerful

00:55:22.280 industry, they can file suit against you and just wait until you run out of money or will

00:55:30.380 to fight it, right? They can just drown you in lawsuit and motions and everything.

00:55:36.260 so the trial is very weird because weeks before the verdict it effectively ends to recap the

00:55:46.880 texas statute says the information states or implies that a perishable food product is not

00:55:54.040 safe for consumption by the public so this is what the entire trial has been resting on

00:55:58.180 so after the prosecution lays out its case oprah's defense files a motion to dismiss

00:56:05.660 my understanding is this is like fairly common that defense teams would be like we all saw how

00:56:11.780 shitty that case was let's let's get this whole thing out of here yeah and so based on this motion 0.97

00:56:17.420 to dismiss the judge rules that beef is not perishable i'm sorry what the fuck it's so 0.94

00:56:26.640 fucking weird so as we discussed at length last episode because i was foreshadowing all of these 0.91

00:56:34.620 Veggie libel laws are based on the argument that existing libel laws might be fine for the Gwyneth Paltrow's of the world, but because our products are perishable, we should get more protection from defamatory claims. 0.96

00:56:53.020 And so a huge amount of like the pretrial motions, the sort of interstitial things within the trial are arguing over, is cattle a perishable product?

00:57:04.880 Because if it's not perishable, then this law doesn't apply.

00:57:08.160 Michael, this went from being one of the most fascinating topics we've gotten into to the biggest pile of like brain rot. 0.96

00:57:18.880 It's so fucking weird. 0.81

00:57:21.540 So the judge in the case rules in this motion to dismiss that cattle is not perishable 0.97

00:57:29.180 because if the value of cattle falls precipitously because Oprah made a TV show about how cattle

00:57:34.520 is bad, you can still sell your product, right?

00:57:37.440 You can, she says like, you can sell it to like hot dog makers.

00:57:40.520 Like you can grind up your like old diseased cows and like put them in hot dogs.

00:57:44.580 Right.

00:57:44.960 Exhibit A, jerky.

00:57:47.140 Exactly.

00:57:47.740 Yeah.

00:57:47.900 The phrase that they use is it's not beyond marketability for a limited period of time,

00:57:54.140 right?

00:57:54.360 Which the entire law rests on.

00:57:56.260 I am so sorry.

00:57:57.240 This is like the cannibal hamsters.

00:57:59.320 My brain can't move on.

00:58:01.420 Cattle is like straightforwardly perishable.

00:58:03.960 But then when you think about it, I guess everything is perishable.

00:58:06.560 Humans are perishable.

00:58:07.900 Yeah, long enough time goes by. 0.99

00:58:09.520 It's all fucking perishable. 0.99

00:58:10.820 So they were hoisted by their own petard. 0.99

00:58:13.020 They used this like fake thing about it like, oh, we're perishable.

00:58:17.560 so we don't count to get these laws passed. But then the judges are like, well, according to your

00:58:22.260 own bullshit ass law, your product isn't perishable. Okay. So as a result of this motion to dismiss, 1.00

00:58:29.020 the trial then gets kicked down to ordinary business disparagement laws. So under this law,

00:58:37.940 they not only have to prove that Howard Lyman and Oprah's statements were false,

00:58:42.380 they knew they were false they also have to prove that they said them anyway out of malice

00:58:48.580 oprah and howard lyman hate these specific cattle ranchers so much that they're going to state a

00:58:56.800 knowingly false claim i like the idea that oprah has like a red yarn bulletin board somewhere in

00:59:04.820 her like one of her 12 homes yeah the cattle industry it's time and we start with these 0.97

00:59:12.300 Small fries.

00:59:13.540 Yeah.

00:59:13.760 And they, you know, as we mentioned last episode, at no point did she mention Texas or obviously

00:59:18.740 these specific people in her episode.

00:59:21.300 She was just talking about beef.

00:59:23.100 So it's just like a frivolous lawsuit then becomes like triple frivolous.

00:59:27.420 Yeah.

00:59:27.620 So the trial goes on for a couple more weeks and then we finally get to the verdict and

00:59:30.440 it's like a unanimous verdict and everybody's just like, no, the claims are not false. 0.93

00:59:36.060 Like whether or not they knew they were false, you haven't even proved that they're fucking 0.97

00:59:39.500 false. 0.97

00:59:39.980 i mean listen this this is the gwyneth paltrow ski trial where it's like everyone's watching

00:59:46.400 with bated breath and then at the end everyone is of course like no he said he didn't even see 0.98

00:59:52.020 what happened he was just like i think you're wrong like that's just like a huge fucking waste

00:59:56.360 of everybody's time yeah ultimately like what what are you doing so there's a very weird thing 0.82

01:00:01.340 on the courthouse steps afterwards where everybody kind of declares victory so oprah

01:00:06.120 cries in the courtroom like it's clear this is very emotional it was not clear that she was going

01:00:10.180 to win like i i can see how this would be like a hugely anxiety producing thing she then goes out

01:00:14.920 on the courtroom steps and says free speech not only lives it rocks so she's casting this as like

01:00:20.380 a free speech trial the cattlemen also on the steps say that you know we have won because we've

01:00:27.860 firmly established that u.s beef is safe and not perishable yeah

01:00:32.580 i also think that the cattlemen are just like factually wrong yeah the mad cow thing was kind

01:00:40.960 of already over at this point the beef industry had already bounced back what were you even trying

01:00:46.180 to prove well and by this standard american beef to your point was always sort of quote unquote

01:00:52.520 safe in this way i feel like the real legacy of this case is that like way more americans knew

01:00:57.440 at this point that they grind up cows and feed them to other cows than did before which like

01:01:03.300 that's not great pr for your industry the fact that you know you're fighting the mad cow stuff

01:01:07.800 but like what people are grossed out by is that look in that way the real winner here is howard

01:01:14.900 lyman yeah yeah oh yeah this has taken a one hour oprah show and spun it into years of publicity

01:01:24.420 for the guy who couldn't stop talking about feeding cows to cows or whatever like chef's

01:01:31.400 kiss incredible also uh a little lyman epilogue i watched a bunch of youtube videos of like where

01:01:36.720 he's given talks where he talks about this according to him oprah's producers asked him 0.93

01:01:42.580 to pay them back for her legal fees of five million dollars which is so fucked yeah that's 0.97

01:01:50.960 fucked up no it also i mean who knows if this is true or whether oprah knew about this or whatever 0.98

01:01:56.520 but it it does reveal like the fundamental misunderstanding of this that like oprah it's 0.90

01:02:02.320 not that he said it it's that you aired it right totally you found him invited him on your show 0.87

01:02:07.700 didn't edit out the parts where he said a bunch of shit that was like scaring the public you like 0.74

01:02:12.720 to put all of the responsibility on him for saying it and none of the like steps of the process in 1.00

01:02:18.540 which you amplified it and like platformed it like come the fuck on you're you're way more 0.97

01:02:24.100 responsible for this look if you are a very famous wealthy person you are never disputing the check 0.95

01:02:31.840 yeah there's then a series of appeals i've read all of the appeals they're like they're more

01:02:36.920 available than the original court documents every single time they appeal it like every district 0.99

01:02:43.200 judge whatever is just like what no like this is obviously like what the fuck are you talking

01:02:48.880 these are not false claims yeah these are not like libelous a lot of them are opinion this is 0.82

01:02:54.780 very well protected by like the first amendment and we all know beef is like twinkies it never

01:03:01.780 goes bad cattle live forever yeah yes yes one of the rejected appeals the judge says stripped to

01:03:07.980 its essentials the cattleman's complaint is that the dangerous food episode did not present the

01:03:13.220 mad cow issue in the light most favorable to united states beef it's like yeah you guys are

01:03:18.220 mad that like you got bad pr yeah totally and like not untrue it was not a flattering episode

01:03:24.540 also not untrue it wasn't like set up with an eye toward a fairness or journalistic integrity

01:03:31.620 in a meaningful way and like that doesn't mean that someone owes you 12 million dollars but then

01:03:37.940 the really interesting epilogue of this is that because of this decision that cows live forever

01:03:43.860 and the trial getting kicked down to ordinary business disparagement statutes, this wasn't

01:03:50.700 tried under the veggie libel law. This wasn't a test of the concept of veggie libel. So they're

01:03:57.260 all just kind of sitting there on the books. I read actually a really interesting article about

01:04:01.700 why they haven't been tested. I think because people are afraid that if you try using them,

01:04:06.060 they'll be struck down on first amendment grounds like they're pretty blatantly unconstitutional

01:04:11.820 honestly and so if you use them they might get overturned whereas if you don't use them

01:04:17.900 you can like use threats of them and like the existence of them to have this chilling effect

01:04:22.000 which is kind of what they wanted ultimately yeah you just have to be more careful if you're talking

01:04:26.620 about an agricultural product in these 13 states than you would for other products

01:04:29.720 there's only been three cases tried under the veggie level laws and uh one was dismissed and

01:04:37.540 two were thrown out i was gonna say what are the other two wait you do this this was gonna be the

01:04:42.400 ending quote do you want to read do you want to read the paragraph i do want to read a paragraph 0.88

01:04:46.540 you're gonna love this this is the weirdest fucking thing okay sending this to you quote 0.61

01:04:51.440 a second lawsuit was brought by a group of emu ranchers against honda motor company 0.97

01:04:57.400 arising from a television commercial for the honda civic emus versus sedans in the ad a young

01:05:05.360 man named joe drives his civic to meet with several potential employers about career opportunities

01:05:11.420 he then talks with a real estate developer who tells him joe let's not call it a pyramid scheme

01:05:18.460 just after that joe goes to an emu ranch where he and the rancher observe a pen of grazing

01:05:26.800 emus and the rancher says emu joe it's the pork of the future a group of ranchers sought suit

01:05:35.420 under the texas statute incredible i i don't think less of emus after this i think the emus

01:05:42.980 are fine this group of geckos filed suit against geico what are we doing here this is another one

01:05:50.980 where like a judge looked at it for like three minutes and was like what no yeah go away this 0.70

01:05:56.280 is not a real case and then we can't have ducks suing aflac it's not gonna happen

01:06:01.180 so that's the kind of like bleak epilogue of the veggie libel laws the less bleak epilogue of mad

01:06:10.360 cow disease is that like yeah it it has kind of been dealt with like it's not really a big deal

01:06:17.040 in britain anymore like we know the cause of it it's been addressed it's not you know we're not

01:06:22.120 getting cases anywhere near like we used to. There was actually a case of it discovered in

01:06:27.300 the U.S. in 2003. Again, there's kind of these structural elements in the U.S. beef sector that

01:06:32.480 kind of keep it from becoming like a massive outbreak. They found another case in 2005,

01:06:36.620 another case in 2006, another case in 2012. So every once in a while, these things do

01:06:41.440 pop up in various countries, but it hasn't really spread throughout the system. And there's been a

01:06:47.080 couple other cases of mad cow in humans like very isolated cases but it's fewer than 200 people

01:06:53.520 worldwide total and like 170 of those were like the original outbreak in britain yeah so you know

01:06:59.380 you can't say the risk is zero like you know this isn't something that is like this will never

01:07:04.120 happen again or whatever but like this is an extremely extremely rare thing to happen like

01:07:09.980 you're more likely to get it just as you age randomly than you are to get it from beef at

01:07:14.680 this point are they still feeding cows to cows in the uk or in the u.s is that still happening

01:07:20.900 my understanding is they do still do this but they remove the brain and the spine which is

01:07:24.820 where most of the like the mad cow stuff is remove tiny repeating machine strikes again

01:07:44.680 We'll see you next time.

Maintenance Phase - May 23, 2023

Oprah v. Beef Part 2： Apocalypse Cow

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