Entertainment

ABC News asks judge to toss ‘pink slime’ lawsuit

Lawyers for ABC News have asked a judge to toss out a $1 billion defamation lawsuit filed by a South Dakota-based meat processor over a product that critics dub “pink slime.”

Beef Products Inc. sued ABC News Inc. in September, claiming the network damaged the company by misleading consumers into believing the product is unhealthy and unsafe.

The lawsuit filed by Dakota Dunes named ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer and two ABC reporters, Jim Avila and David Kerley, as defendants.

It also names Gerald Zirnstein, the U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist who named the product “pink slime.”

Lawyers for ABC News said this week that while the term “pink slime” may come across as unappetizing, it is not incorrect. Lean, finely textured beef is both pink and — like all ground beef — has a slimy texture, the lawyers argued.

“That term, while unflattering, does not convey false facts about [the product],” they wrote.

Pink slime is “precisely the kind of ‘imaginative expression’ and ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ that is constitutionally protected,” the network said.