Beef Products Inc.
is not dropping its lawsuit filed in 2012 against ABC and journalists Diane Sawyer and Jim Avila, but it has removed a number of defendants from the complaint. The lawsuit was filed over a series of reports BPI alleges were inaccurate and cost the company a significant chunk of its sales of lean finely textured beef. Politico reports BPI dropped ABC’s news division, ABC correspondent David Kerley, two former USDA microbiologists and a former BPI quality control manager who acted as a whistleblower against the company. The lawsuit seeks more than $1.2 billion in damages. It charges ABC with making more than 200 false and disparaging statements about BPI’s product, a form of beef trimmings injected with ammonia to fight pathogens, and helping to fortify the nickname “pink slime.” BPI claims ABC’s “disinformation campaign” caused sales of the product to decline from five million pounds a week to less than two million pounds, forcing BPI to close three facilities and let go of more than 700 employees.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting news service.