Home Local News TESTIMONY CONTINUES IN BPI VS ABC NEWS TRIAL

TESTIMONY CONTINUES IN BPI VS ABC NEWS TRIAL

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Updated 3:35pm 6/7/17

Testimony continued Wednesday in the $1.9 billion dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Beef Products Incorporated against

ABC Broadcasting and reporter Jim Avila.

Dr. Mindy Brashears of Texas Tech University took the stand to testify that she visited BPI manufacturing plants 18 to 20 times over four years and tested and ate the beef product.

She reached nine conclusions through her work there:


OC…..not pink slime. ;29

Dr. Brashears has a PHD in food microbiology and has worked in the beef industry her entire life.

She explained how lean finely textured beef is produced from sparse lean beef trimmings.

OC………..cooking oil. 19

Dr. Brashears also explained how LFTB is made to the jury.

The trial continues Thursday in Union County District Court in Elk Point, South Dakota.

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Testimony continued Wednesday in the $1.9 billion dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Beef Products Incorporated against ABC Broadcasting and reporter Jim Avila.

BPI’s defense counsel started the morning by playing a videotaped deposition from former ABC News senior producer Sarah Amos.

Amos was in charge of online versions of ABC news stories in 2012, when the network referred to BPI’s lean, finely textured beef as “pink slime” in a series of reports over two months.

Those stories called into question the safety of LFTB with headlines such as “70 per cent of ground beef in supermarkets contains pink slime” which generated hundreds of consumer e-mails to ABC.

Amos testified on how the network worked to get the story carried on food and parenting blogs and released names of grocery stores that carried LFTB.

She talked about how pink slime became one of the top searches on google after the stories were aired.

Following that deposition, Dr. Mindy Brashears of Texas Tech University took the stand to testify that she visited BPI manufacturing plants 18 to 20 times over four years and tested and ate the beef product.

Dr. Brashears has a PHD in food microbiology and has worked in the beef industry her entire life.

She explained how lean finely textured beef is produced from sparse lean beef trimmings.

Dr. Brashears said LFTB is meat, it is beef and it is safe to eat.
She said it is not a filler, nor pink slime or gelatin like, and is not from a part of a beef carcass subject to contamination.

The trial continues Thursday in Union County District Court in Elk Point, South Dakota.