Normally hot dog stories are about who shoves the most hot dogs down their gullet. This one is different. It’s hot dog maker versus hot dog maker in a US federal district court, as each claims their product is better than their competitor’s. It’s Kraft Foods versus Sara Lee Corporation. It’s a $1,6 billion sausage product war.

Falling short of slapping one another with sausage, the two American food giants have been facing off for a few years, and even had the federal judge presiding over the case slightly amused.

“Let the wiener wars begin,” Judge Morton Denlow proclaimed in a Chicago courtroom the other day.

Sara Lee’s attorney, Richard Leighton:

There’s never been anything of this scope … in the entire history of hot dogs.

Basically, the battle is over how far companies can go when boldly asserting that their product is better than a competitor’s, and should prove groundbreaking in US competitive advertising.

It puts Sara Lee Corporation, which makes Ball Park franks, against Kraft Foods Incorporated, which owns Oscar Mayer, and it’s very serious.

It began in 2009 when Sara Lee opened the dispute with a lawsuit accusing Kraft of unfair business practices for claims of sausage taste-test superiority.

Sara Lee’s lawyers have put it to Kraft that you can’t just fib and say your sausage is 100-percent pure beef when it’s not:

Oscar Mayer commercially advertises and promotes its Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks in interstate commerce as ‘the 100-percent pure beef dog’. The product is neither ‘100-percent’ beef nor ‘pure’ beef. This willful, literally false attempt to distinguish Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks from the competition is done by Oscar Mayer despite its being well aware of the chemical and other non-beef contents of this product.

Spilling condiments all over itself while filing papers to counter-sue, Kraft defended their sausage:

Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks contain beef and — as with all hot dogs — some additional ingredients.

Sara Lee has also argued that Kraft’s claims about making the US’s tastiest hot dogs are based on flawed taste tests because tasters couldn’t even put things like ketchup or mustard on their hot dogs.

Both sausage makers haven’t featured too highly in independent taste tests and an adviser to aspiring vendors, Rob Merino, put it bluntly:

Anyone I know in hot dog circles wouldn’t put Oscar Mayer or Ball Park in their top five [tastiest hot dogs], so I don’t know what they’re trying to prove.

When Leighton mentioned ketchup as a potential topping for further taste tests, Judge Denlow said simply, “That’s an area of great dispute.”

Forgetting about jokes for a moment, the judge went on to ask whether something more sinister was going on, and as the battle continues, the federal court looks as if it will decide whether or not you can say things that are simply not true.

[Source: TheDaily]