On April 16, 1996, Oprah Winfrey featured former cattle farmer turned vegetarian activist, Howard Lyman, as part of the Humane Society’s, Eating with Conscience Campaign. The topic was Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) which is very similar to mad cow disease. Only one month earlier the British Government had announced that 10 citizens were dead or dying from mad cow disease. The disease can lie dormant inside of a person for years, and would only be discovered when …showed first 75 words of 739 total…

…showed last 75 words of 739 total…might have been more easily fixed, turned into a media frenzy that portrayed Oprah as the righteous victim of an attack on her civil liberties. So now not only do you have the easily startled masses afraid of your product, but they also think of you as the villain. Had they kept a cool head they would only have had the mad cow scare to deal with, instead they also had to manage image issues.