Oprah v. Beef Part 2: Apocalypse Cow

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, where you get a lawsuit, you get a lawsuit, everybody gets a lawsuit. That's very good, Aubrey. Thank you also for not doing the voice. Oh, you're welcome. It was a long-term choice. You are Michael Hobbs. You are Aubrey Gordon. And today, Michael, we are taking up the thrilling conclusion of our story about Oprah v. the Cattlemen's Association. Is that right? Oprah versus beef, yes. So where are we diving in? 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. So when last we left Oprah, she had aired. She had aired an episode about mad cow disease, and she had said things like, this has freaked me out enough that I'm not going to eat another burger again, and these cattle ranchers argued that this led to a massive hit in their sales. Yes. So they sued her under Texas's ag gag law. Sirloin slander. She and her team decided that it was important to take it seriously so that she didn't get hit with wave accidents. After wave of lawsuit. And as part of taking it seriously, she hired a jury consultant named Dr. Phil. Mr. Dr. Reverend Phil. Yes. Great. The third. So a little bit of timeline. March of 1996 is when Britain reports the first human cases of mad cow disease. April of 1996 is when Oprah does her fateful dangerous foods episode. May of 1996 is when the cattlemen sue her. For the baffling sum of $12 million. Throughout the course of 1996, they're doing, you know, it's like pre-trial stuff. They're like the motion to do this and the motion to do that. And they're like arguing over like technical stuff. So it's not until January of 1998 that the trial actually starts. It's wild how goddamn long. It's weird. I know. Trials and the legal system take like, I absolutely remember this from organizing days when people would be like, we just need to take it to the Supreme Court. To the Supreme Court. Yeah. And they'll overturn the whole thing. And I'm like, cool. Hang out for like a decade. I actually remember this growing up. Do you remember growing up that Oprah actually filmed her show in Texas for six weeks? No, I don't remember this. So this is one of the weirdest footnotes to the story that Oprah was under contract to produce a certain number of shows per year. So she couldn't just like take time off and go be on trial in Texas. So they, they rented out the largest theater. They rented out the largest theater in Amarillo, Texas and like did her show there. So every day for six weeks, she would be in trial, like in a courtroom all day. And then at night she would go straight to this theater and film an episode of Oprah. And it was really weird because the judge imposed a gag order. Oprah was not allowed to say anything, even like tangentially related to any of the issues that came up in the trial. And like, she constantly made jokes about this on TV. She's like, you're going to tell a talk show. Host not to say anything like this kind of became a running joke. So there's these like genuinely like pretty funny and charming clips of her interviewing celebrities. Like there's one where she's talking to Patrick Swayze and he's telling some story and he's like, I was driving around. I ate a hamburger. And then Oprah sort of like leans into the microphone and she's like, I have no opinion about hamburgers. I have none, no thoughts in my brain about beef. Sure. This is the Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien of its day, right? Like no one's saying anything, but everything's kind of about it. Right. Also, I just looked up the population of Amarillo, Texas in 1998 was 170,000 people. Yeah. It's a very small city. It's a small city and Oprah is in it in 1998 at the height of her powers. It's also very ironic because the lawyers for the cattlemen deliberately chose Amarillo as a venue to fuck over Oprah, right? Because this is a town who's almost their entire economy depends on beef. The largest employer. The largest employer is a slaughterhouse. 25% of the country's cattle is produced like in this region and Amarillo is kind of like a hub for the entire industry. So like the population of people there and like the jury pool is all like super pro beef. So it's actually like pretty fucked up, but it also speaks to Oprah's power because she's so popular and her popularity transcends all kinds of lines of like race and ethnicity and age and class that she goes down. And pretty soon there's a line around the block starting at 4 a.m. to get tickets to her show. And like she becomes this like really celebrated figure. So apparently there's this like dueling battle of bumper stickers that people will have bumper stickers on their car that are like Amarillo hearts Oprah. And then people are also putting bumper stickers on their car that say the only mad cow in Amarillo is Oprah. Holy shit. Ooh, getting into some. Uh, deeper, deeper topics there. Uh, calling a black woman a mad cow. Uh, doesn't look great. It does appear to be the case that overwhelmingly like public opinion eventually swung toward Oprah over the course of the six weeks. This is like when a celebrity shows up in Portland, Oregon and everyone loses their minds. It's like when people from Seattle pretend that Tom Skerritt is a celebrity. Ooh, Tom Skerritt lives here. Like, who knows who that is if you're not in Seattle. It's fine. He used to have the Everclear guy. Yeah. Uh, I also want to read some of the, the either great or terrible headlines coming out of this trial, depending on your perspective that this, as we discussed last episode, this is like the height of bad dad puns. So there's of course, cattlemen have cow over Oprah show. Classic. Is there a move over? No, this is the one I wanted to do. This is the one I feel like they're leaving. They're leaving it on the table. Really? You got to have a moo one. Cattlemen have bad moo-tivations in suing Oprah. Love it. There's also Oprah comma cattlemen lock horns. Good. Texas jury hears meaty libel case. I feel like maybe the best one I saw is it just says a lot at stake and it's S-T-E-A-K, which is pretty good. That's really, I enjoyed the steak. There's an editorial in the Tennessean that says beef against Oprah. Oprah is a case of bologna, which I don't know. Bologna isn't like made of beef, I don't think. So I don't know if it works literally. Who knows what bologna is made of. And then the best academic article about this I saw it was called Apocalypse Cow. Also quite good. God, that would be great anywhere, but especially in an academic setting. I love it when academics are like, fuck it, I'm going in. And then I am also going to send you one of the, richest fucking texts I've ever seen. This is from the Kitty Kelly biography of Oprah. If it wasn't you, we wouldn't be talking about this. But I think that this is going to make you melt down. You're like maybe the only person who, when you say, I'm going to send you something and it's going to make you melt down. I'm like, ooh. Yeah, like, ooh, going in. Let's go. Okay. The female judge refused to allow women to wear pants in her courtroom. So Oprah wore a skirt. Every day, 1996, it's not 19, it's not 1951. It's 1996. Quote, I love the fact that no cameras were allowed in the courtroom. She said, those artist renderings made me look skinny. Even with her trainer and chef in tow, she still battled her weight, at least for the first few days. Then she said she gave herself over to quote Jesus and the comfort of pie. That's the title of my memoir. By the way, she gained 22 pounds. During the six week trial, quote, my trainer, Bob Green was very upset with 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. And we had macaroni and cheese with seven different cheeses. Her co-defendant, Howard Lyman, a cattle rancher turned vegetarian, was not allowed to mention weight or food to her. Quote, her attorneys told me I couldn't talk to her about her diet during the trial. They felt she was under. Under enough pressure. What are your thoughts? What kind of fucking gremlin. I know. Is like, oh, Oprah Winfrey, here's my chance to tell this lady about diets. It's very clear from what Oprah says about this later that like, this is a huge source of anxiety for her. This is the first time she had been sued in this way. I think she was kind of waking up to the fact of like how big of a deal she was. And the fact that she was now going to become a target for these kinds of lawsuits. And it appears that she was very nervous about losing. Yeah. But then. Because she's a public figure and a woman and a black woman, she has this extra layer of anxiety on top of it of like, oh, my God, what if I gain weight? Yeah, totally. Which is just such a fucking weird thing to throw in there. And also the fact that she did gain weight and it ends up in her fucking biography. Yeah. 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 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 gonna be stressful oh yeah right yeah 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 although I'm glad that she was able to have pie and like let go of this for a little while it seems like she like deserves it that mac and cheese sounds good normalize it normalize pie and seven cheeses yeah so the trial starts in January of 1998 they are suing her under the Texas perishable foods act this is one of these veggie libel laws that passes in this wave of legislation that happens in the early 1990s it's the first time this law has ever been used so it's kind of a test case for this Texas veggie libel law and a test case for kind of like these these laws writ large right because they've been on the books for five years now and they've never been used so the the the country's legal establishment is watching this to see whether it works and whether like these laws could potentially be overturned it seems like the highest stakes possible test litigation oh yeah if you're gonna sue Oprah so to find Oprah guilty the lawyers have to prove that Oprah is not the one who's going to sue Oprah so to find Oprah guilty the lawyers have to prove that Oprah and Howard this is in the law they have to have stated or implied that a perishable food product was not safe for consumption for the public so they cite Oprah's comment that this has put me off eating another burger one of the claims they're contesting is just four words long feeding cows to cows they also focus on Howard's comparison of the US to the UK this is from the eventual appeal that is filed years later it says branding Lyman an extremist the cattleman cite two of his inflammatory statements during the April 16th Oprah Winfrey show first the cattleman challenge as patently false Lyman's assertion that mad cow disease could make AIDS look like the common cold second they maintain that Lyman falsely accused the United States of treating mad cow as a public relations issue as Great Britain did and failing to take any substantial measures to prevent a mad cow outbreak in this country they're also suing over the editing this is actually really interesting they're saying that the show was deceptively edited because as we talked about last episode they did in fact have like a somewhat independent USDA genuine expert on mad cow disease and they cut his appearance from eight minutes down to 37 seconds as an audio editor like I I actually agree with the concept that you could very easily libel somebody with editing no question listen Michael you do it to me well we had I don't know if you remember this right like very very early in the show we had like a rough cut we were sort of taking apart pieces of the episode and putting it back together and there was a point where there was some like artifacts of the previous edit and I said at one point I was like well that is why so many kids like die in road accidents to America and then you cackled for like two minutes which was just like it was like I had cut out something else there like a joke but because I had like children dying and then you laughing it was like wow Aubrey's a monster this is also Michael I'm so glad you bring this up we're now back in bachelor land this is what the bachelor does all the damn time you got a villain edit in your season but they want to bring you back as the bachelor congratulations you're going on Bachelor in Paradise you're about to get the best edit possible yeah Nick vile this is why I'm so nervous about people having parasocial relationships with us because I I keep wanting to stress that like I'm a normal person who's like a sometimes and I don't want you to experience that as a betrayal yeah that's right that's right no Mike Mike has bad takes and is sometimes a prick podcasters they're just like us exactly so the lawsuit is mostly over these false claims and it it really rests on this claim that Howard Lyman made that America is treating mad cow disease like Britain right it's basically treating it like a public relations issue rather than like a public health issue so for you and I to adjudicate whether this claim has any merit we need to talk for the next two hours about the history of mad cow disease delightful can't wait rotting brains let's go speaking of which what do you remember about mad cow like just as a as a disease as a condition from last week what I remember is feeling very upset by the effects of it it's really upsetting it essentially like creates holes in your brain am I remembering that right yeah the actual name of it is bovine spongiform encephalopathy spongiform yeah and that's because it like your brain looks like a sponge yes I under it that's a very effective name in terms of conveying what happens uh and that it's like degenerative and pretty rapidly degenerative is that right yeah so it's it lives in your body for a very long incubation period of years and then you're dead within a year yeah that seems horrible so the weird thing about this condition is that it takes place in almost all mammal species oh so you can find it in like minks and in Elks it's called chronic wasting disease in sheep it's called scrapey which is a great disease name I like diseases that sound like diseases that sounds like cropsy yeah I mean that sounds like an urban legend bad guy in humans it's called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease there are these little things in your like nerve cells mostly in your brain and your spine called prions and we don't really know what they do the the current theory apparently is that they like help your brain communicate with itself and communicate with your nervous system but they're all over the place and they kind of propagate themselves by like folding they're like constantly folding into these like three-dimensional shapes and every once in a while this is extremely rare they get like an error message like a little 404 and they like up and then they like fold in on themselves and like capture the little error message and start repeating the error message holy the the kind of traditional version of it is called the traditional version of it is called like spontaneous Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and like it just happens in your brain and then it starts like propagating itself and then you start to get these awful symptoms which are very similar to dementia at first and so it mostly happens in older people the median age of onset is 66. the bad news is that there's no way of testing for it before you get symptoms and there's no treatment for it but the the good news is that it's not good for your brain it's not good for your immune system it's not good for your immune system it's not good for your immune system it's not good for your immune system but the the good news is that there's no way of testing for it before you get symptoms and there's no treatment for it but the the good news is that it's not good for your immune system is that it's very difficult to spread. So, you know, it's not airborne. It doesn't come out in your poo or your pee or any of your fluids. Like it's once one person gets it, they just sort of get it spontaneously and then they die. Jesus. There's a couple instances of cannibal tribes like getting it where like you can spread it from one person to the other if you're like eating someone else's brain. But again, it's, you know, it's fairly rare behavior in mammals to like eat an entire carcass of another thing. So luckily it can't really become a pandemic. It's just like something unbelievably unfortunate that like happens to an individual basically. But what is important about the mad cow outbreak of 1996 specifically is that it had never been seen in cows before. So we knew that it was in sheep. We also knew that humans cannot get it from sheep. Humans can eat the meat. Humans don't eat a lot of sheep brains. But apparently even if you do, humans don't get it from sheep and other animals don't get it from sheep. So the first case that is documented in a cow is in 1986 in the UK. This cow was acting really weird and like cows haven't really done this before. Like cows can get rabies apparently. But like rabies has very specific symptoms and a farmer is like, oh, this doesn't really seem like rabies. And eventually somebody tests the brain of the cow after it dies and is like, oh, this is spongy as fuck. Like I think we have a new thing on our hands. And then. After they identify the first couple of cases, they start like testing for it more widely and like it's just galloping throughout the cattle industry. So by the end of 1988, there's 95 confirmed cases on 80 farms. By 1989, there's 2200 cases. By 1990, there's 10,000 cases. And by 1991, there's 24,000 cases. Good God. There are many, many, many things written about the. Butch UK government response to the mad cow epidemic. And like I read three books about this. I read the parliamentary inquiry that is eventually published about like every single step along the way that like they fucked up. So the first thing that the British government fucked up in responding to this is they realized what they had on their hands in March of 1987, but they didn't announce it until May. So like this was spreading within the cow population and like they didn't tell farmers like they didn't. They didn't tell people that this was happening basically. Yeah, that stuff is always so tricky, right? The like you don't want people to panic, but also like withholding information seems like a real bad practice. So fairly early, like almost immediately, the UK government figures out that like this has to be. spreading through cows eating cow brains. Like, that's the only way we know that animals can get this is eating their own species brains and, like, spinal cords and shit. And so, like, they look around the cattle industry and they're like, oh, yeah, it's a fairly common practice for cattle to be ground up and turned into this, like, bone meal protein stuff that they give other cows. So it's like they know relatively quickly, like, how this is spreading. So it's not until June of 1988, nearly two years after they find the first case, that they ban the practice of feeding bone meal to cows. And they, this is so baffling to me, they give them a grace period. So they announce it in June, but they're like, oh, you don't have to implement it until, like, five weeks later in July. But, like, this is, this is, like, poisonous, like, they're feeding poisonous food to other cows. It feels a little bit like the time when, uh, very early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. When people were like, uh, N95 masks don't even work. And it was just so that there were enough for healthcare providers versus being like, hey, it's most important that the people who are exposed to this the most have the protection that they need. So we're putting them over here, right? Like, this feels like it's in the same neighborhood of, like, boy, I see how you got here, but, like, reorganize your principles here. Reorganize your priorities. This is not the way. This is not the way to do it. There's also a weird naivete about how farmers are going to react to this. So they basically, in 1988, tell farmers, like, you can't use this stuff anymore, right? It's, it's poison. Don't feed it to your cows anymore. But they don't give them any compensation. What? So the farmers are like, well, I've spent tens of thousands of pounds on food. Like, cows need a lot of food. This is, like, a fairly sizable industry. This, like, protein meal that they're making. And it's like, oh, yeah, like, all of that is worthless. Yeah. And famously a pretty low margin business for farmers and ranchers. Like, they're not exactly, like, making bank. It also just, like, totally destroyed trust between the government and the farmers. Because the farmers were like, well, fuck you. You're just telling me not to use this stuff. And, like, you're not giving me any compensation. It feels really insulting. So a lot of the farmers just kept using it until their supplies were gone. And this is another super duper botched government response thing. The UK government didn't ban exports. What? Of the bone meal. So this is another thing that, like, they're selling it to, like, French farmers, Swiss farmers, Belgian farmers. This is, like, part of the industry. So, like, all of the cases of mad cow that we get in Europe in the early years of this are from, like, French cows eating British bone meal. Oh, interesting. They also fucked up the compensation in telling farmers to destroy their herds as well. So the government bans all this. They also tell farmers that they have to kill any cows that have, like, symptoms of mad cow. But they have this whole compensation scheme where any cow that you kill, like a normal cow, they pay you 100% of the value of the cow. However, if the cow has mad cow disease, they only pay you 50% of the value of the cow. What? The logic, I guess, is, like, well, it has mad cow, so, like, it's worth less, so we shouldn't be paying as much. But the problem is, as soon as farmers start to see symptoms in their cows of mad cow disease, they kill the cow and grind it up and put it in the food. Right. Right. They slaughter it, they sell it, they get rid of it because it's about to lose half of its fucking value. I remember growing up, like, my dad's a pilot, and he would talk about how if you had a mental health diagnosis, on the books, you would be grounded as a pilot. You couldn't fly. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you just don't get diagnosed. Right! Which just meant there were, like, a bunch of people with, like, untreated and undiagnosed mental illnesses, and it just sort of disincentivized, like, a generation or more of pilots from, like, seeking mental health care that they may have really needed. Yeah, it's super predictable. I mean, this is, like, really 101 stuff. Yeah. The one non-botched government response. Yeah, that's what they did, is they also assign researchers to find out how this started. So there's actually, like, a fairly interesting mystery that they have to figure out. They know that mad cow disease is spreading through this practice of grinding up cows and feeding it to other cows. Cows eat cow brains. That's how they get mad cow, right? They know that's happening. However, this practice is very widespread. Like, America does it. Every country in Europe does it. This is, like, a pretty well-entrenched part of the cattle industry by this point. And in Britain, they've been doing this since the 1920s. This is actually, like, something that, like, Oprah is kind of reacting to and, like, the rest of the public is reacting to. It's like, oh, we're doing this regularly? Yeah. And the whole cattle industry is like, yeah, you don't want to think about, like, the conditions under which your beef is produced. But, like, yeah, there's a lot of, like, waste products when you kill a cow. And, like, we're going to try to do something with those waste products. Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, then why is mad cow happening in Britain? And why is it happening? And why is it happening now? So this is actually pretty interesting. They managed to triangulate the source of the outbreak based on all these, like, incubation periods and when the cows are getting it, where the cows are getting it. They trace it back to the winter of 1981 to 1982. Huh. Something changed in that winter to start spreading mad cow throughout the cow population. Hmm. So there's a couple different factors that appear to have led to this. The first is the. Increasing use of this bone meal protein stuff. That basically cows need a lot of protein to grow up and get, like, big muscles. This is, like, just like human beings. We all need protein. And this is one of the cheap ways to produce protein is, like, grind up meal and, like, feed it to cows. And so there's a weird thing that, like, the price of, like, soybeans and other, you know, quote, unquote, natural forms of protein spiked that winter. Hmm. So in the winter of 1981. The percentage of, like, cow feed that was this bone meal went from 1% to 5%, which was the highest in Europe. No other country was using that much bone meal. There was also a change in the way that they create bone meal. So I don't know if this is a trigger warning, but if you're eating right now, stop eating. This is, like, this is so fucking gross. Listen, if you've been eating beef in particular for any of this, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe finish your lunch and then come back to us in a couple hours. This is so fucking gross, Aubrey, but we have to talk about it. So the way that this bone meal protein stuff works is they basically take, like, cow carcasses and oftentimes they'll throw in other animals, too, like other sort of farm animals that are around. They grind them all up into this kind of, like, flop. And so there's all these industrial processes to separate the fat in that slop from the protein. And what's super weird. What's super weird is the fat part is actually very valuable. This is, like, beef tallow. And it's, like, an industrial additive that, like, they use it in cosmetics. They use it in, like, printing money. Like, it's part of plastics. I believe famously it was what gave McDonald's fries their flavor for years and years and years, right? This is, like, a very refined industrial process to, like, separate out the constituent parts of this, like, gross animal slop. Mm-hmm. And as the. The industry was getting bigger and consolidating, especially in the 1970s in Britain, they switched from creating this bone meal in batches, like you do a bunch of tons of it at once, to doing it continuously. So they have, like, a conveyor belt that does it just all the time. And as part of that process, they weren't heating the bone meal up as high. So it used to be that they were heating it to, like, 220 degrees and that dropped to, like, 180 degrees or something like that. They just weren't getting it. They weren't getting it up to as high temperatures and keeping it at those high temperatures for as long when they switched to this new process. Uh-huh. There was also a really interesting change in processing that it used to be that, you know, because tallow is so much more valuable than this, like, protein shit, they would use chemical solvents. So after they heated it up, they would blast it with these, like, weird chemicals to kind of dissolve the fat and then they could reconstitute it through other chemical processes later. But the industry started increasingly reliant. on that in the 1970s. And then there were some, like, really grisly fires and explosions at these rendering plants because the solvents that they were using were extremely dangerous. Boy, oh, boy. So as, like, an occupational health and safety thing, they phased out these solvents. I will say, I'm glad to hear that part. I feel generally wary of conversations about, like, the gross nature of food production. Not because we shouldn't. Those aren't things we should talk about. But because it so quickly tips into, like, that bread is made out of the same thing as yoga mats are made out of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of sensationalized claims that are designed to squick people out and make them think that their food is dangerous when, like, water is a thing that's used in making bread and yoga mats, right? Like, there are plenty of things that sort of go in both categories. But from an occupational safety standpoint, that feels like a place where we are generally, like, asleep at the wheel as consumers. Right? Like, there's, like, very little discussion of, like, what is the safety of farm workers picking your vegetables and fruits? What is the safety level of folks who are sort of working on this process? So I'm, like, very. Very glad to hear that the occupational safety part sort of wins the day. It's a really weird, like, perfect storm of, like, the price of international, like, fish meal production went up and they reduced the heat by, like, a little bit in these processes. And the protein that they were feeding the cows went from, like, 5% fat to 12% fat. And, like, none of these things on their own seem like that big of a deal, right? They're, like, little tweaks. Okay, like, these are the little things that happen in industrial processes all the time and, like, none of us ever find out about. It's just like, oh, okay, just, like, a little tiny practice that doesn't really make any big difference. But all of these things together, because the heat wasn't as high and fat protects microorganisms from heat. So the fat produced a barrier around, like, the protein stuff that meant that it wasn't getting heated to the same level. So basically, there was some process in place to destroy all of the prions and, like, it just fell below the threshold at which it could get rid of all the prions. And it left a couple of the prions in the little, like, protein cakes. Also, these cakes sound fucking disgusting. Apparently, I read a really good book called Deadly Feasts by Richard Rhodes about, like, how all of this happened. And he described them as scab-colored and said that they just, like, smell like a dead body. Oh. So just, like, fucking gross. These, like, little patty cakes of, like, flesh stuff that you feed to fucking cows. I really love that a running theme of this show is you being like, these are the things that are too gross for me and I can't talk about it. And then you bring episodes. And then I share them. And then I have to tell other people about them to share my grossed outness. Well, and then you get, like, a wave for however long. A wave for however long of, like, social media response. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for their prompts are, like. Check this out. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. It's a very particular hell of your own making, bud. So, basically, by the 1980s, they've kind of figured out what happened. There's still, it's actually very interesting. There's still debate about where, like, the first case came from. So, one theory, the theory in the parliamentary inquiry is that just, like, a cow got it. One day. The same way humans do. It's like prions are, like, doing their little folds. And then there's, like, a little 404 that gets folded into the cow brain. And the cow gets ground up and fed to other cows. And so on. Right? That's one theory. The other theory is that it was a variant of scrapie. That because it was relatively widespread in sheep. And everyone thought that other animals couldn't get it from sheep. They were grinding up sheep in these, like, sheep parts in this slop stuff, too. And that's how it got into the feed for the cows. So, that is still a mystery. Like, the actual origin point. Like, the big bang of all of this. But once you start having these, like, diseased cow brains in the food, because you've had so much industrial consolidation, you're making this in, like, huge batches. Right? So, one infected cow goes into, like, a huge batch and then gets spread out to, like, hundreds of farms. So, that's how this ended up spreading, like, underneath everybody. Under everybody's radar throughout the entire country in the early 1980s. So, what Howard Lyman said on Oprah that everyone's going to fight about in Texas in another decade is that the British government essentially treated this as a public relations problem and not as, like, a threat to human health. And that is on some level true because before this, there had never been a case where a version of mad cow had spread from animals to humans. It is true that, like, when you look at the government response, the government was basically seeing this as, like, an animal disease and was trying to protect the British cattle industry. But they weren't doing this. It's not like there was some, like, flashing red light, like, this is about to jump to humans at any time. There were actual scientists and, like, specialists in this who were like, no, no, we've been eating sheep with scrapie for centuries. We've never gotten scrapie in humans. Right. So, they're calibrated to, like, completely the wrong scale of thinking. And they're approaching an incomplete list of, like, institutions that need to be engaged and all kinds of stuff, right? Like, so, if you're focused on the wrong problem from jump or a small fraction of the total problem from jump, like, of course you're going to come up with solutions that don't fix the whole thing if you don't know the whole thing exists. Yeah, like, given the information that they had at the time, this really wasn't on anybody's radar. And there was, this is, like, one of the most fucked up things I've ever read. In 1985. In 1985, there were also all these other studies where people had kind of tried spreading prions from, like, one species to another or even within the same species. So, in 1985, there's an article on, like, cannibal hamsters. What? Where they feed hamsters hamster brains. What? And they didn't get, like, hamster spongiform encephalitis. When you say, hang on, we got to unpack cannibal hamsters. You don't get to just. Put it in my notes. Escape by cannibal hamsters. I'm assuming that this is a lab experiment, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where hamsters are being fed. There's not, like, a subset of hamsters that are, like, Hannibal hamsters. Hamsters. There was a plane crash and the hamsters had to resort to eating one another. That makes more sense to me. And I feel relieved and very sad for those hamsters that got fed hamster brains. That seems really disturbing. But glad. Glad to know that I can just love my unproblematic fave hamsters again. But yeah, at the time, the conventional wisdom was that, like, even if cows were eating cow brains, you would need, like, a lot of brain material for this to spread from one animal to the other. And for whatever reason, that turns out not to be true for cows. So there's this big freakout in the 1980s, but it hasn't really crossed over to the public yet. There's news stories. It's a big deal. But it's kind of cast as, like, an agricultural. It's an agricultural issue, right? Like, there's this weird disease in cows, but the public isn't super duper tracking this. So after this initial flurry, a couple years go by, and then in 1990, there is a cat named Max who dies of mad cow disease. It appears that the cat became infected from eating cat food that had, like, ground up cow brains in it. Oh, my God. And it's, it, first of all, it's, like, kind of scary that mad cow is spreading from one species to another, which, like, they said couldn't happen, right? And then also, there's, like, just like Oprah, you're like, oh, wait, we're all eating fucking cow brains? Totally. Hang on. Totally. It's, like, gross to think about. Cat food. Didn't see it coming, but of course. This kicks off a much larger wave of panic than there had been just when, like, cows had it. This is also when we actually. We actually get the coining of the term mad cow, which was something the British tabloids came up with. It has British tabloid written all over it, that is for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It also fits very well in headlines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's amazing to me, right, is the British tabloids who you know I hate with, like, the depths of my heart. Like, I loathe British tabloids. Yes. But this is a very weird case for me because, you know, I've looked into a million moral panics at this point, and they all have kind of, like, the same structure. You know, especially this tabloid media, like, whipping up a bunch of fears about something that is fake, right? The British tabloids, at this time, start whipping up a panic about mad cow, and they're like, it could spread to humans. And, like, they're fucking right. But this is like a stopped clock is right twice a day, right? It's so funny to me. Like, fully by accident slash, like, compulsive sensationalization of things that they hit on this. Not because they're, like. Not because they're, like, observing anything, right? And they're quoting these, like, crank doctors who are like, the medical establishment doesn't want you to know, which is true. That's accurate. Like, the medical establishment was, like, super head in the sand about the possibility of this spreading to humans. And, like, the government at this point started doing all kinds of, like, PR shit. Like, the minister of agriculture went on TV and fed his daughter a hamburger as, like, a PR move to be like, look how safe the beef is. Like, everyone should stop slandering beef. And, like, his daughter's fine. It's all fine. But, like, it was true that the government was doing, like, I wouldn't say a cover-up, but the government was definitely doing a lot of, like, pro-beef propaganda at the time. God, I just feel like our next episode, you're going to be like, there was a bat boy, and he did escape from a Chicago lab. This is what's so funny is because, like, this has all of the hallmarks of a moral panic. Right? If you looked at this structurally, right, there's, like, some pseudoscience stuff. There's, like, taking, you know, a small number of cases and blowing them up into these disaster scenarios. But, like, it happened. It then happens. So, for the first time ever, kudos to the Daily Mail for getting it right. Jesus Christ. It's bleak. Yeah. So, then a couple more years go by after the cat-cow panic kind of dies down. We then get to 1993, which is when the first. human cases start to show up so there's a farmer who one of his cows had been diagnosed with mad cow and like he ended up slaughtering a bunch of his cows early and then he starts getting this like weird dementia and people are like uh this feels weird but to my knowledge that has never actually been confirmed as a case of mad cow it could be and it could just be like a really unlucky guy who happened to get dementia really early we don't know yet boy oh boy i had an encounter a couple weeks ago with someone who was like i had covid before they knew what it was and i was like oh in like january or something and this person was like no in like 2017 and i was like oh yeah no it hadn't leaked from the lab yet yeah also in 1983 there's a little girl named vicky rimmer who starts getting these weird symptoms at the age of 15 and like her grandmother the grandmother of vicky rimmer who starts getting these weird symptoms at the age of 15 and like her grandmother the grandmother of vicky rimmer who starts getting these weird symptoms this is actually a really interesting example of like something that is usually bad but is true in this case her grandmother had been reading the tabloids and her grandmother was like i think this is mad cow and she goes to the tabloids and tabloids are like mad cow and little girl and start whipping up panic again under any other circumstance i'd be like this is very irresponsible but it's fucking true it has now been confirmed that this little girl had mad cow boy oh boy in 1994 there's a lot of people who have been reading the tabloids and they're like there's a 15 year old girl who has it in 1995 there's another teenager who has it and so after a couple of these cases start trickling out it becomes clear that something is happening and so on march 20th 1996 the british government announces that there have been 10 cases of human mad cow disease do they have any sense of why so many teenagers it's actually to this day it's not clear there appears to be some weird like genetic marker that makes some people susceptible to it and not others but it's it's not clear to me why it's happening in children although the median age of these 10 cases is 28 it's also really interesting i actually spent like a long time trying to figure out like where these cases originated right like what did they eat to give them mad cow right but like you can't really trace it back because it's been seven years since these people ate the contaminated beef right we've talked on the show about like you know there's a lot of people who have been eating the contaminated beef and they've been like how bad people are at self-reporting data of like what they ate today like 10 adds seven years it's not getting better and it's like the only thing you could even do to investigate is like well did you eat beef between like 1987 and 1989 like that's as good as you can do and this incubation period also foments another like much more mainstream wave of panic i mean this is when oprah finds out about it this is when the rest of the world finds out about it i mean this is a huge deal that it's like okay there's 10 cases of human mad cow disease and it's like tainted beef that has a 100 fatality rate like eight years later like that's fucking terrifying yeah totally this is also when we get the the you know of course the tabloids now go into overdrive and there's various predictions of how many people will die the highest estimate is 500,000 people jesus god eventually it's it's 177 people so like this this model is like way fucking out there but it's like yeah you start counting up the number of people who eat beef yeah totally this is when like the rest of the world kind of like kicks into action there's something very funny that the eu has a ban on british beef in place for 10 years but even after they lift it france just keeps the ban in place like informally even though that's illegal under like eu rules france is like no no we got we've got problems with the british we're gonna keep this feels very france just like we feel like it what are you gonna do about it yeah we're just not gonna tell you guys about it we never liked you anyway yeah so we're now going to back to amarillo texas it's january 1998 again it's a weird timeline because the mad cow panic in america really like peaked in 1996 when oprah was doing her episode and then fell pretty quickly right once people figured out that like there had never been a case of mad cow in america and there was no human case of mad cow in america ever either and like this remained an extremely british phenomenon like to this day it's like you know 140 000 cattle in britain were diagnosed with mad cow and in in portugal it's like 200 in france it's like 150 it's like really isolated outside of britain so by the time the trial starts like almost two years later the country's kind of over mad cow right and if it's unique to this one sort of industry in this one country then like you figure out like if you're not living in the uk right like you figure out that you can sort of like let go of some of that anxiety so the trial itself begins oprah and howard lyman both eventually end up taking the stand oprah testified for three days i couldn't find trial transcripts which is really annoying i wanted to like do like a dramatic reading of the testimony all i know is from what has been included in like the appeals and the various court decisions and media reports howard lyman says the first question they asked him when he got onto the stand was like are you a vegetarian yes or no like they were they were casting him as like an animal rights extremist it's like they're playing to the amarillo crowd yeah totally aha but then okay i'm just gonna like spoil this they really never had a chance of winning this lawsuit really they have to prove a series of things to win the lawsuit so a lot of the trial rests on the fact that oprah like her show caused this huge drop in cattle prices in april of 1996 the prosecution calls like traders they call an economist who's like i see no other structural reasons why the price of beef would have fallen at that time but then it's really hard to prove this stuff right like why does the price of a commodity fall at a particular time well is oprah's show in there maybe but to get damages they have to show that she was basically single-handedly responsible for it and cattle prices were down for 11 weeks so somehow they have to prove that oprah's show was like so powerful yeah that people stopped eating beef for three months yeah totally like honestly i buy it oprah was extremely influential at that time i actually do too honestly yeah but like to prove it again i don't know i don't know i don't know this is like part of what we come up against in nutrition research all the time right in order to prove this thing you have to rule out every other possible thing that could cause this and that's going to be really hard to do when there is like a legitimate public health issue at play yeah people are getting this news from more than just oprah so you have to prove it was oprah and not 60 minutes or good morning america or the today show or whoever else covered it this is what's so weird google around you can find a bunch of articles from the time being like could mad cow happen here you know some of them are more responsible than others but like panic about mad cow spreading to the u.s was very widespread it's something the entire media was doing it's not like oprah like went out on a limb with this segment right yeah there's also there the defense calls various other economists who say that like prices of beef had actually been falling for a while and they call this guy to do this sort of like rapid fire questions like isn't it true that demand in asia was falling at that time and isn't it true that there was more supply coming out of slaughterhouses at that time like there's all these kind of supply and demand things that again like normal people never really think about but like all of these things are kind of what these prices are really based on is like supply and demand like kind of intrinsic factors yeah and they're like well there's all this kind of other stuff happening at the time and it's it's really hard to put all of this at the feet of i i agree with you i think that like she had something to do with it like the reputation of beef fell but there were also like children dying in the united kingdom from eating fucking beef yeah so there's also like enough panic in the population at large that like yeah if people if children are dying from eating something people are going to stop eating it for a while and like i get that that sucks for your industry and like it's unfair but like you can't blame any one media figure for that yeah totally i mean i feel similarly honestly about the like it feels like there's been an uptick in the last few years in people like holding oprah personally responsible for like dr oz and dr phil and all of that kind of stuff absolutely she played an influential role there and there is some like accountability to be had there yeah but not more than there is for those guys themselves yeah exactly she's like a huge cultural force and like absolutely there's more to talk about here but again like the degree to which people like come after her personally for the sort of like big cultural waves that sometimes she starts and sometimes she rides you know seems disproportionate to me and also even under this lower standard they still have to prove that oprah's statements and howard lyman's statements were false and that they knew that they were false so that's a pretty fucking high bar right and if you look at the actual statements that they're accusing oprah and howard of saying you know Oprah says it stopped me cold from eating another burger. Well, that's not a factual statement. False. No, it didn't. I saw you eat beef on your show. We talked last episode about how like opinions are protected. And then Howard Limons, you know, he says this disease could make AIDS look like the common cold. Well, that's a prediction about the future. That's like me saying like, well, if self-driving cars become normal, lots of bikers are going to get murdered in traffic, which is fucking true, by the way. But also like that, that's an opinion. That's my prediction of the future. That's not a fact. It's very obvious from the structure of that, that like it's it's an opinion. Well, and also it's a figure of speech, right? X will make Y look like Z. He's not giving it enough legs for you to like have a factual statement to debunk. Right. This feels a little bit like in courtroom dramas when they'll like have a witness on the stand and be like, didn't you say you'd do anything to be on this TV show? Like it's treated as this big smoking gun moment. And I'm like, honestly, like, I said I would kill for a grilled cheese yesterday. Yeah, people don't. Let's not. It sort of feels like the same thing with Howard's claim that the U.S. is treating this like a public relations issue, just like Britain did. You could say that that's like closer to a factual claim. Then I'll never eat beef again. But it also very firmly falls into the category of like analysis to me. Like it's not a straightforwardly factual claim. And it's also not false. Like one of the things that Howard mentioned on the Oprah show is that the meat industry instituted a voluntary ban on putting brains and spines in these like protein patty cakes. But the U.S. government didn't make it mandatory. And what he's saying is that the U.S. government is treating this like a PR issue, not a threat to human health. And like maybe you disagree with that or maybe you would put it differently. But it's not just like a clear cut factual statement. And it's not. In a clear cut way wrong. Yeah. Oprah talks later about how her entire strategy was basically making this a trial about free speech. Right. They talked about like the slippery slope. If my show gets busted for asking questions about the safety of beef, think about all of the other shows that will have this huge chilling effect throughout the entire journalism industry. So in Kitty Kelly's biography, she has a description of Oprah testifying. She says, Like, that's a strong argument. Yeah, it totally is. And also that's like a strength of sort of speech in her own defense that you don't often hear from Oprah. Right. Like she'll tackle issues that way. She'll do all kinds of stuff. But like, maybe this is just like a sign of my like age and generation. But I don't remember hearing Oprah talk in those terms about herself. She also says, this is also from the Kitty Kelly biography. When she was asked about her integrity, she said, I am a black woman in America. Having gotten here, believing in a power greater than myself. I cannot be bought. I answer to the spirit of God that lives in us all. She said her influence was not enough to drive Americans away from beef. If I had that kind of power, she said, I'd go on the air and heal people. This is a tricky one because she is like extraordinarily influential at this point in her life and career. But again, to trace all of this sort of like industry-wide impact back to just her is bonkers. I think that she's, she's fundamentally making like kind of a chicken shit defense throughout the trial. She keeps saying like, well, I'm not a journalist. Like you can't, you can't expect me to have the same standards as like a sort of traditional journalist. Like I'm an entertainment talk show. And then she also hides behind this like extremely Gwyneth defense of like, I'm just asking questions. That is chicken shit. Oprah has huge influence. Whether or not you say, go out and buy this book, please. If you say this book is good, people are going to go buy the fucking book, right? If you say beef is bad, people are going to stop buying beef, like come the fuck on. Right. But then also you don't want to have a legal regime where anytime you say, driving a Honda sucks and then like fucking Honda sues you. And so if that becomes the legal standard, then like the chilling effect would be profound, right? If you just can't even, as much as I hate to use the term, ask questions about whether a product is harming us. So it's like Oprah should not have done this, but also the cattlemen should not have done this either. This is an ESH situation. Michael InfoWars Hobbs, just asking questions. I think it's important to be able to ask the tough questions. It's tricky because it's like an argument that like Fox News makes too, right? To be like, it's not news, it's opinion. In this case, I take her point about the sort of chilling effect on journalism. And I don't think that's wrong. Like journalists are historically not the most moneyed among us. So if you take on a particularly rich or powerful industry, they can file suit you and just wait until you run out of money or will to fight it, right? They can just drown you in lawsuit and motions and everything. So the trial is very weird because weeks before the verdict, it effectively ends. To recap, the Texas statute says the information states or implies that a perishable food product is not safe for consumption by the public. So this is what the entire trial has been resting on. So after the prosecution lays out its case, Oprah's defense files a motion to dismiss. My understanding is this is like fairly common that defense teams would be like, we all saw how shitty that case was. Let's, let's get this whole thing out of here. And so based on this motion to dismiss, the judge rules that beef is not perishable. I'm sorry, what the fuck? It's so fucking weird. So as we discussed at length last episode, because I was foreshadowing, all of these 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. 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? Because if it's not perishable, then this law doesn't apply. Michael, this went from being one of the most fascinating topics we've gotten into to the biggest pile of like brain rot. So the judge in the case rules, in this motion to dismiss, that cattle is not perishable because if the value of cattle falls precipitously, because Oprah made a TV show about how cattle is bad, you can still sell your product, right? You can, she says, like you can sell it to like hot dog makers. Like you can grind up your like old diseased cows and like put them in hot dogs. Right. Exhibit A, jerky. Exactly. Yeah. The phrase that they use is it's not beyond marketability for a limited period of time, right? Which the entire law. The entire law rests on. I am so sorry. This is like the cannibal hamsters. My brain can't move on. Cattle is like straightforwardly perishable. But then when you think about it, I guess everything is perishable. Humans are perishable. Yeah. Long enough time goes by, it's all fucking perishable. So they were hoisted by their own They used this like fake thing about like, oh, we're perishable, so we don't count to get these laws passed. But then the judges are like, well, according to your own bullshit ass law, your product isn't perishable. Okay. So as a result of this motion to dismiss, the trial then gets kicked down to ordinary business disparagement laws. So under this law, they not only have to prove that Howard Lyman and Oprah's statements were false, they knew they were false. They also have to prove that they said them anyway out of malice. Oprah and Howard Lyman hate these specific cattle ranchers so much. That they're going to state a knowingly false claim. I like the idea that Oprah has like a red yarn bulletin board somewhere in her, like one of her 12 homes. Yeah. The cattle industry, it's time. And we start with these small fries. Yeah. And they, you know, as we mentioned last episode, at no point did she mention Texas or obviously these specific people in her episode. She was just talking about beef. So it's just like a frivolous lawsuit. Then becomes like triple frivolous. Yeah. So the trial goes on for a couple more weeks and then we finally get to the verdict and it's like a unanimous verdict and everybody's just like, no, the claims are not false. Like whether or not they knew they were false, you haven't even proved that they're fucking false. I mean, listen, this, this is the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial where it's like everyone's watching with bated breath. And then at the end, everyone is of course like, no, he said he didn't even see what happened. He was just like, I think you're wrong. Yeah. It's just like a huge fucking waste of everybody's time ultimately. Like what are you doing? So. there's a very weird thing on the courthouse steps afterwards where everybody kind of declares victory so oprah cries in the courtroom like it's clear this is very emotional it was not clear that she was going to win like i i can see how this would be like a hugely anxiety producing thing she then goes out on the courtroom steps and says free speech not only lives it rocks so she's casting this as like a free speech trial the cattlemen also on the steps say that you know we have won because we've firmly established that u.s beef is safe and not perishable yeah i also think that the cattlemen are just like factually wrong yeah the mad cow thing was kind of already over at this point the beef industry had already bounced back what were you even trying to prove well and by this standard american beef to your point was always sort of quote-unquote safe in this way i feel like the real legacy of this case is that like what's the real legacy of this case is that like what's the real legacy of this case is that like way more americans knew at this point that they grind up cows and feed them to other cows than did before which like that's not great pr for your industry the fact that you know you're fighting the mad cow stuff but like what people are grossed out by is that look in that way the real winner here is howard lyman yeah yeah oh yeah this has taken a one hour oprah show and spun it into years of couldn't stop talking about feeding cows to cows or whatever like chef's kiss incredible also uh a little lyman epilogue i watched a bunch of youtube videos of like where he's given talks where he talks about this according to him oprah's producers asked him to pay them back for her legal fees of five million dollars which is so fucked yeah that's fucked up no it also i mean who knows if this is true or whether oprah knew about this or not i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't about this or whatever but it it does reveal like the fundamental misunderstanding of this that like oprah it's not that he said it it's that you aired it right totally you found him invited him on your show didn't edit out the parts where he said a bunch of shit that was like scaring the public you like to put all of the responsibility on him for saying it and none of the like steps of the process in which you amplified it and like platformed it like come the fuck on you're you're way more responsible for this look if you are a very famous wealthy person you are never disputing the check yeah there's then a series of appeals i've read all of the appeals they're like they're more available than the original court documents every single time they appeal it like every district judge whatever is just like what no like this is obviously like what the fuck are you talking these are not false claims yeah these are not like libelists a lot of them are opinion this is very well protected by like the first amendment and we all know beef is like twinkies it never goes bad cattle live forever yeah yes yes one of the rejected appeals the judge says strip to its essentials the cattleman's complaint is that the dangerous food episode did not present the mad cow issue in the light most favorable to united states beef it's like yeah you guys are mad that like you got bad pr yeah totally and like not untrue it was not a flattering episode yeah also not untrue it wasn't like set up with an eye toward a fairness or journalistic integrity in a meaningful way and like that doesn't mean that someone owes you 12 million dollars but then the really interesting epilogue of this is that because of this decision that cows live forever and the trial getting kicked down to ordinary business disparagement statutes this wasn't tried under the veggie libel law this wasn't a test of the concept of veggie libel so they're all just kind of sitting there boy on the books oh boy i read actually a really interesting article about why they haven't been tested i think because people are afraid that if you try using them they'll be struck down on first amendment grounds like they're pretty blatantly unconstitutional honestly and so if you use them they might get overturned whereas if you don't use them you can like use threats of them and like the existence of them to have this chilling effect which is kind of what they wanted ultimately yeah you just have to be more careful if you're talking about an agricultural product in these 13 states than you would for other products there's only been three cases tried under the veggie level laws and uh one was dismissed and two were thrown out i was gonna say what are the other two wait you do this this was gonna be the ending quote do you want to read do you want to read the paragraph i do want to read a paragraph you're gonna love this this is the weirdest fucking thing okay sending this to you quote a second lawsuit was brought by a group of emu ranchers against honda motor company arising from a television commercial for the honda civic emus versus sedans in the ad a young man named joe drives his civic to meet with several potential employers about career opportunities he then talks with a real estate developer who tells him joe let's not call it a pyramid scheme just after that joe goes to an emu ranch where he and the rancher are going to get a pen of grazing emus and the rancher says emu joe it's the pork of the future a group of ranchers sought suit under the texas statute incredible i i don't think less of emus after this i think the emus are fine this group of geckos filed suit against geico what are we doing here this is another one where like a judge looked at it for like three minutes and said go away this is not a real case and then we can't have ducks suing aflac it's not gonna happen so that's the kind of like bleak epilogue of the veggie libel laws the less bleak epilogue of mad cow disease is it like yeah it it has kind of been dealt with like it's not really a big deal in britain anymore like we know the cause of it it's been addressed it's not you know we're not getting cases anywhere near like we used to there was a case of mad cow disease and it was actually a case of it discovered in the u.s in 2003 again there's kind of these structural elements in the u.s beef sector that kind of keep it from becoming like a massive outbreak they found another case in 2005 another case in 2006 another case in 2012 so every once in a while these things do pop up in various countries but it hasn't really spread throughout the system and there's been a couple other cases of mad cow in humans like very isolated cases but it's fewer than 200 people worldwide total and like i don't know if it's true but i don't know if it's true a hundred and seventy of those were like the original outbreak in britain yeah so you know you can't say the risk is zero like you know this isn't something that is like this will never happen again or whatever but like this is an extremely extremely rare thing to happen like you're more likely to get it just as you age randomly than you are to get it from beef at this point are they still feeding cows to cows in the uk or in the u.s is that still happening my understanding is they do still do this but they remove the brain and the spine which is where most of the like the mad cow stuff is removed tiny repeating machine strikes again i don't know if it's true but i don't know if it's true but i don't know if it's true