Paula Deen, the Food Network?s ebullient queen of butter-drenched Southern cooking, has found herself in the middle of a dispute between Smithfield Foods Inc. and a union that has long tried to organize one of the company?s pork processing plants. As part of a national campaign to win support for its effort, the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, is trying to get Ms. Deen to sever her ties to Smithfield, for which she has been a paid spokeswoman since last fall. Within the growing world of food-celebrity endorsements, Ms. Deen is the first personality to have become entangled in such a fight.
See "Union, in Organizing Fight, Tangles With Celebrity Cook", Marian Burros, The New York Times, April 19, 2007