{"id":74604,"date":"2025-09-20T03:37:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T03:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/74604\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T03:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T03:37:18","slug":"whats-the-whole-scoop-on-ben-jerrys-social-mission-and-the-row-with-unilever-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/74604\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the whole scoop on Ben & Jerry\u2019s \u2018social mission\u2019 and the row with Unilever? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben & Jerry\u2019s ice-cream is becoming simply Ben\u2019s ice-cream, is it?<\/p>\n

No, Jerry Greenfield is leaving the company after almost 50 years following an increasingly bitter dispute<\/a> with Unilever<\/a>, the multinational that bought his and Ben Cohen\u2019s company 25 years ago.<\/p>\n

And what was this dispute about? <\/p>\n

The row started in 2021 when Ben & Jerry\u2019s said it would stop selling its ice cream in Israeli<\/a> settlements in the occupied West Bank<\/a> and East Jerusalem. Then Unilever sold Ben & Jerry\u2019s Israel division to a local operator, undercutting that aim. Last year, Ben & Jerry\u2019s accused Unilever of threatening to dismantle its board and sue directors over their support of Palestinians in Gaza<\/a>. That support did not waver and earlier this year Cohen was arrested and charged with \u201ccrowding and obstructing\u201d during a protest against the Gaza blockade at a US Senate hearing.<\/p>\n

And things have escalated now, have they?<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly. In his resignation letter \u2013 also posted on Cohen\u2019s social media pages<\/a> \u2013 Greenfield said leaving was \u201cone of the hardest and most painful decisions\u201d of his life, but added that he could not \u201cin good conscience\u201d work for a business that had been \u201csilenced\u201d. Both men have described themselves as \u201cproud Jews\u201d.<\/p>\n

But if Greenfield sold his stake 25 years ago, why was he still there?<\/p>\n

The sale included a clause that the brand would have its own board independent of Unilever so it could maintain its progressive stances on social and political issues, and Cohen and Greenfield stayed on as employees to safeguard the brand\u2019s social mission.<\/p>\n

Social mission? Do they not just make ice cream? <\/p>\n

\u201cWe love making ice cream \u2013 but using our business to make the world a better place gives our work its meaning,\u201d is what the Ben & Jerry\u2019s website says. <\/p>\n

How have they tried to make the world a better place?<\/p>\n

You mean apart from making lovely ice cream with cool names such as Cherry Garcia? From 1986, Ben & Jerry\u2019s has donated almost 10 per cent of its pretax profits to charities. In the early 1990s, they were vocal in their support of Farm Aid, which wanted to keep family farmers on their land. It has run campaigns with the Children\u2019s Defense Fund and was vocal in its opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic. It backed the Occupy Wall Street movement and has been an advocate of LGBTQ+ rights and addressing the climate crisis. <\/p>\n

Has the activism stalled?<\/p>\n

According to Greenfield\u2019s letter, Unilever put a halt to its social activism.<\/p>\n

What has Unilever said about that?<\/p>\n

The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which is being spun off from Unilever, said it disagreed with his perspective \u201cand have sought to engage both co-founders in a constructive conversation on how to strengthen Ben & Jerry\u2019s powerful values-based position in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben & Jerry\u2019s ice-cream is becoming simply Ben\u2019s ice-cream, is it? No, Jerry Greenfield is leaving the company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-74604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-weekendreview"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}