Opinion ID: 767372
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Dangerous Food Show

Text: 5 As the British public panicked over the human victims in their country and over the announcement of a possible link between BSE and new-variant CJD, employees of the Oprah Winfrey Show 2 laid the groundwork for an episode covering the hidden dangers in food. Alice McGee, a senior supervising producer for the Oprah Winfrey Show, and James Kelley, an editor, held a brainstorming session and decided that dangerous food would be a good topic for a show. The two approached Diane Hudson, the Oprah WinfreyShow's executive producer, regarding the topic, and she approved, so long as BSE was not the only issue discussed. Kelley began preparing for the show and assigned members of his production team to research the Mad Cow Disease topic. Three weeks before the taping of the Dangerous Food show, Andrea Wishom, a researcher for the Oprah Winfrey Show, conducted research and interviewed individuals who were knowledgeable about CJD and Mad Cow Disease. During her research, Wishom discovered that the Center for Disease Control, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and several professors and researchers felt that Mad Cow Disease could not occur in the United States. In telephone conversations, however, Wishom learned that Lyman believed Mad Cow Disease could produce an epidemic in this country worse than AIDS. Wishom spoke with each potential guest on the telephone, discussed her research with Kelley and summarized research for Winfrey's use during preparation and taping of the show. 6 On April 11, 1996, the Dangerous Food episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show was taped in Chicago, Illinois. Guests on the show included Lyman, 3 Dr. Gary Weber, 4 Dr. Will Hueston, 5 Linda Marler, Dr. James Miller, 6 and Beryl Rimmer. During the taping, Winfrey discussed several topics with her guests, including the discovery of new-variant CJD in Britain, the gruesome symptoms of the disease, the impact of the disease on the families of those stricken, the threat of the disease in the United States, and the steps being taken by cattlemen and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prevent an outbreak of BSE in this country. Over the course of the taping, Lyman made several statements regarding the threat of BSE in the United States that Drs. Weber and Hueston found misleading. The experts responded to these statements with facts designed to show the cautious response that the United States had taken to the threat of BSE. They explained the extensive animal testing and oversight used to discover and prevent the spread of BSE in United States cattle. They noted that these procedures had been in place for nearly a decade and that no case of BSE had ever been reported in the United States. They also pointed out that cattlemen voluntarily banned on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding while the Department of Agriculture considered a mandatory ban on the practice. 7 After the taping, Kelley edited extensively to pare down the Mad Cow Disease segment for broadcast. 7 From approximately eight minutes of Dr. Hueston's statements recorded during the taping, only 37 seconds remained in the broadcast. As instructed by Winfrey and McGee, Kelley cut out the redundancies in Dr. Weber's and Dr. Hueston's interviews. These redundancies included portions of the following: (1) Dr. Weber's references to the voluntary ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeding, (2) Dr. Weber's explanation of what ruminant-to-ruminant feeding entailed, (3) Dr. Weber's distinctions between Britain's approach to BSE and the UnitedStates's more careful approach, (4) Dr. Weber's response to an audience member's question concerning the examination of cattle before slaughter, and (5) most of Dr. Hueston's comments, including a description of the safeguards against slaughter-house processing of sick cattle. Also edited out was Lyman's admission that American beef is safe. None of Dr. Miller's statements appeared in the show as broadcast. The edited show was broadcast on April 16, 1996.