“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assembly, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” (U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights).

The Oprah Winfrey v. Cattlemen case is a good example of an area where modern-day circumstances have come in conflict with the First Amendment. The Oprah Winfrey Law Suit forced open a public debate for the first time, the unconstitutional restrictions which “product disparagement laws” impose on our First Amendment rights of free speech and press.

Food-disparagement laws received natio

nal media attention when a group of Texas cattle ranchers sued talk-show host Oprah Winfrey for saying on one of her shows that the fear of “mad cow” disease “stopped her cold from eating a hamburger.” The ranchers claimed that Oprah Winfrey had defamed their product, beef, in violation of the Texas food-disparagement statute. (Business Law Today, Fifth Edition, 2001, p.125).

On April 16, 1996, Oprah Winfrey devoted one of her shows to “Mad Cow Disease” the popular name for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a degenerative neurological disease of cattle. Britain at the time was in an uproar because BSE had been linked to some cases of Creutzfeldt-Jacub disease, a similar disease in humans, usually fatal. It is believed that such disease were being transmitted, not by microbes, but by protein-like particles—as dead cattle were being rendered and fed to other cattle, or when humans eat infected beef, however well cooked. For many Americans watching Oprah, this was their first understanding of Mad Cow Disease.

Miller and Jentz, (2001) Business Law Today, fifth edition, (p. 125).

2. The person knows the information is false, and

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