Texas House Rejects Attempted
Repeal Of Ag Libel Protection

AUSTIN — The Texas House late last week rejected an effort to repeal the state's agricultural defamation law, the derisively tagged "veggie libel" law which cattlemen attempted to use when suing television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey.

The repeal bill by Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, a Democrat, was voted down 80-57 Thursday.

McClendon claimed the law encouraged frivolous lawsuits and discouraged free speech, but opponents argued that it is needed to protect the state's agricultural industries.

Even dubbing it the ``veggie libel'' law trivializes a serious issue to agricultural producers, said Republican Rep. David Swinford.

``It makes it sound silly. It's not silly,'' Swinford said.

The law allows producers to sue those who knowingly make false and disparaging statements about perishable agricultural products.

During an April 16, 1996 program on dangerous foods, Winfrey said England's bout with mad cow disease stopped her from eating another hamburger, and a vegetarian activist claimed U.S. stockmen feed "road kill" to cattle. Winfrey was quickly hit with a lawsuit that cost her up to $5 million to defend.

A federal jury ruled in Winfrey's favor after the judge declined to allow cattlemen to sue under the ag disparagement law because, she said, cattle were not "perishable." The lawsuit was forced to proceed under a more difficult statute and failed, largely because the stricter product libel law required the plaintiffs to prove that Winfrey and her co-defendant had specifically derided their cattle.

They hadn't, of course; they had libeled all U.S. cattle and beef. It is just such loopholes in product libel law which the ag disparagement measure seeks to close.

The law recognizes that agricultural commodities are unlike most other commercial products because they are seldom identified with a single manufacturer. A libelous statement about one brand of soft drink doesn't necessarily reflect on competing brands, for instance, but a malicious lie about beef damages the market for all cattlemen.

Keeping the law will continue to have a chilling effect on free speech, argued Republican Rep. Brian McCall during debate on the repeal measure.

``You can't talk about broccoli without the fear that you'll have to defend yourself in a courtroom,'' McCall said.

Opponents note that the danger comes not in talking about broccoli, but in deliberately and maliciously lying about it.