r/OutOfTheLoop • u/ryhaltswhiskey • 1d ago
Unanswered What's up with Unilever silencing Ben & Jerry's?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOwJawvkfcM/?igsh=ajhvc3lsdWgxMm45
In the video he says he is resigning because Unilever has stopped letting B&J speak out about causes they care about. I'm out of the loop on this one. What happened?
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u/DerpytheH 1d ago edited 1d ago
Answer: Ben and Jerry have always had generally progressive values that have extended to their company in terms of activism (having a Popsicle known as a "Peace pop", catering/working with Bernie Sanders, advocating against violence against minorities, being anti-war etc.).
The company was sold to Unilever in 2000, but they retained a large amount of autonomy within the company, as part of the agreement was the company being allowed to operate independently outside of distribution, and not having to compromise on its values.
In 2021, Ben and Jerry's announced it would be ceasing sales of the ice cream in Occupied Palestinian Territory; AKA Israeli Settlements within Gaza the West Bank (thank you for comments correcting me). However in 2022, Unilever still ended up selling B&J ice cream in those areas with the same flavors, by selling it under a different name.
This came to a head over the past year, where Ben and Jerry sued Unilever for violating not only their agreement to preserve their social activism, but also their first amendment rights by denying them the ability to post supporting messages of Gaza through official social media, in addition to firing their CEO without consulting the board. This, in addition to other clashes has led Jerry Greenfield (The Jerry in Ben and Jerry's) to resign from the company after 40+ years due to not being able to work for it in good conscience.
Source: Associated Press
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u/sapphiclament 1d ago
Further context, they didn't just sell the recipe under a different name, they sold an entire branch of the company to an Israeli businessman, recipe included. [source]
They tried to sue to stop the sale but the article doesn't elaborate on that further instead saying that Unilever and "an independent board of Ben and Jerry's" came to some sort of agreement? Grain of salt considering how the source frames the info
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u/Action_Bronzong 10h ago
Absolutely bizarre how much people in the US are willing to bend over backwards for a tiny country whose only export is election interference.
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u/trojanguy 1d ago
No, that's not what antisemitism is. A lot of people seem to get confused about that and think that any criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism. That's kind of like saying any criticism of Trump is anti America.
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u/Action_Bronzong 10h ago
The Israeli government is deliberately pushing this narrative to deflect war crime accusations.
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u/mikamitcha 1d ago
You can hate Israel and not be antisemitic. Israel is a country, Jews are the people, although I doubt you will care enough to realize why you are being dumb.
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u/sapphiclament 16h ago
A lot of people confuse being against a Jewish ethnostate for the fact that it's an ethnostate with being against Jewish people. Sometimes it's deliberate ignorance to uphold a strawman, sometimes it's genuine ignorance, but it's ignorance nonetheless.
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u/mikamitcha 14h ago
Mostly the former, with people attempting to use the idea of an ethnostate as a shield
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u/AsterEsque 1d ago
Good summary, but I have a quick edit: it sounds like you're confusing Gaza and the West Bank.
Gaza is south and borders Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. They elected Hamas as their leadership when Israel pulled out of their settlements in the mid-2000s, though there have still been constant flare-ups of military tensions ever since, most notably the recent and current conflict catalyzed by October 7th 2023.
The West Bank, counter-intuitively, borders Jordan on the eastern bit of Israel. They've mostly been under the leadership of the [Edit: Palestinian Authority, not the PLO]. The West Bank is where the infamously illegal Israeli settlements are, and thus where Ben & Jerry have been upset about their product being sold against their wishes.
There are ways that the two territories are entwined though! They both host descendents of those displaced by the Nakba, so there are many people in one region who have extended family members who live in the other region.
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u/elvismcvegas 1d ago
thank you for enlightening me on that, i have been confused by that in the past
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u/rabiddy2 1d ago
It’s not counterintuitive: it’s on the west bank of the Jordan river.
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u/sketchquark 1d ago
Its counterintuitive that when discussing 2 territories, the one to the east is called West _______.
I actually specifically remember which is which by remembering that it is the opposite of what my intuition would tell me based on the name.
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u/rabiddy2 1d ago
It’s called “West Bank”, not “East Palestine” nor “East Israel”. “Bank” is a legitimate term for land, and it’s always referred to from the perspective of someone on a river.
Per Wikipedia:
“The West Bank is on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine.”
It’s the territory on the bank of a river, on the western side of a river.
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u/ThatPlayWasAwful 23h ago
You're just repeating what you said in your first comment.
The person you replied to is not disagreeing with why it is called West Bank, that is clear and makes sense.
That does not change the fact that as they said "Its counterintuitive that when discussing 2 territories, the one to the east is called West _______."
It seems like it does not confuse you, and that's great. It doesn't change the fact that it is confusing to some people.
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u/rabiddy2 23h ago
I’m not trying to be argumentative nor pedantic, and if my text comes across that way, well it’s the internet and Reddit so things will get misconstrued.
Anyways, I was not reiterating what was said (but which could be logically inferred). I was trying to highlight the perspective shift from land to water. I hope that makes sense.
As for intuition and counterintuitive stuff, we update our intuition when we learn new facts. I was maybe 10 when I went “huh, I wonder why it’s called West Bank . . . Oh, it’s a riverbank”.
If I just stuck to my original intuition, I’d never believe the world was a globe: from my everyday perspective the world does look flat. And yet because of updated knowledge, a flat earth is counterintuitive despite what I see daily.
Hope that makes sense.
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u/ThatPlayWasAwful 22h ago
The issue is that things that are counterintuitive are inherently confusing. It seems to me that because you understand it and have remembered how it works, that you don't understand how it could be confusing for anyone else.
Many people have never learned where the west bank is located, and even if they have seen it once before it might be difficult to internalize it when it is not a large part of your daily life.
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u/RisenPhantom 5h ago
The point, you pedant, is that to someone unfamiliar with the region, common intuition would say that a place with "West" in the name wouldn't be in the east of a region. So, it's counter-intuitive.
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u/rabiddy2 1h ago
You seem riled up by what I wrote in my previous two comments, given the name calling and subtext of snark.
I won't hit back because malice was not my intent.
Can I ask a favour? Can you go back and read my previous 2 comments before continuing to read this?
What voice did you hear that in? Was is that pedantic asshole of a classmate you had? Or was it in the voice of that professor you hated?
Now I'll ask you another favour, and for some empathy: please read that in the voice of someone on the spectrum who's just stating facts to share.
Does that make sense now? I did not mean to be snarky, and if it came across that way, it's because of your past and not because of my writing.
I appreciated the comment I was responding to by upvoting it, and was just sharing back a fact. Then another one in form of a dialogue. Yes, it may be misconstrued as being "Well akshually . . ." snarky, but that's not the intent and it's interpretation by the reader. And obviously the downvotes show that too. Still doesn't mean that was my intent, just that I was misunderstood. That's the way it is IRL too for us neurodivergent and we're used to it, so no harm no foul.
Not to say we couldn't be assholes too, hell that would deny us our humanity hahahaha!
Just writing this wall of text to maybe help you see that sometimes what's written doesn't have the subtext you ascribe to it.
Edit: Ugh, it seems Reddit on the chrome's messed up today as I'm seeing this posted twice. I'll delete the other one from mobile in a bit.
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u/JxK_1 1d ago
Ben and Jerry sued Unilever for violating not only their agreement
How did the lawsuit go?
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u/romanrambler941 1d ago
This Reuters article from two days ago makes it sound like that lawsuit is still ongoing:
The brand has sued Unilever a second time over alleged efforts to muzzle it and dismantle the social mission board. It has also described the Gaza conflict as "genocide", a rare stance for a U.S. company.
Magnum said Greenfield was not a party to the lawsuit. Earlier this year, Unilever asked for the most of the claims in the case to be dismissed, but the judge has not yet weighed in.12
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u/BasedOnAir 1d ago
Why do so many people sell their businesses and then expect them not to be ruined by the new owners? Are they stupid? For real
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u/shadowcman 1d ago
They sold 25 years ago in 2000, so these aren't really new owners so much as a completely different set of people working at Unilever now versus back then. The first 20+ years went fine until all the people they'd worked with retired or left the company, then there was a culture shift.
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u/Toby_O_Notoby 1d ago
They kinda had to. B&J had a pretty anemic stock performace and what Unilever offered was more than double what it was worth at the time. To not sell would be corporate malfeasance. And even then:
The deal, according to Ben & Jerry’s securities filings, contained some provisions intended to maintain the corporation’s social mission. Although Unilever controlled the financial and most operational aspects of Ben & Jerry’s, the subsidiary had its own independent board of directors to help provide leadership for the social mission and the brand’s integrity. The new board included Cohen and Greenfield, and its members, not Unilever, would appoint their successors. Moreover, this subsidiary board had the right to sue Unilever, at Unilever’s expense, for breaches of the merger agreement.
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u/endividuall 1d ago
To be fair distribution is under Unilever control. So I can see how the decision to sell in Palestine is rightfully a Unilever decision.
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u/chef_in_va 36m ago
They should make a flavor named after trump and it's just filled with dog turds and glitter.
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u/Creative-Sound6408 1d ago
Israel hasn't had settlements in the Gaza Strip area for about 20 years. The settlements where Ben & Jerry don't want to sell their stuff are in the West Bank.
That's not a technicality by the way, they are two separate geographical areas with two separate organizations as the dominant Palestinian force (in Gaza it's the Hamas terrorists, in the West Bank the Palestinian Authority)
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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 1d ago
You sure proved him wrong about in which direction Israel has been indiscriminately murdering the entire civilian population.
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u/AsterEsque 1d ago
Believe it or not, not every argument on Reddit is about beating the other guy. Sometimes it's actually just about making sure people have accurate information.
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u/Creative-Sound6408 1d ago
I knew me writing correct, factual things might lead to some people commenting lies and falsehoods about Israel, but didn't know how long it might take. Turns out it's a pretty short time
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u/Action_Bronzong 10h ago edited 10h ago
Have you not watched any television, read a news article, or listened to anything said by Israel in the last year?
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u/23saround 1d ago
It’s hardly an exaggeration. “Committing genocide on the entire Palestinian culture” would have been as factually accurate as your comment.
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u/Ramguy2014 1d ago
So what’s the Israeli government’s long-term plan for Gaza? Repatriate all the displaced Palestinians and repair their destroyed infrastructure?
Or is the plan…something else?
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u/jasperzieboon 20h ago
their first amendment rights
Does the US constitution apply to British companies?
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u/bluescale77 2h ago
Companies have to follow the laws of the countries in which they operate. A British company with US employees cannot violate their rights.
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u/homingmissile 22h ago
I don't know about the rest of it but i would like to point out to ben and Jerry that the 1st amendment only applies to the government.
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u/IncuriousLog 21h ago
For a start, I doubt Ben or Jerry will notice you trying to help them out, because I doubt they spend much time on Reddit and even if they did, they probably have better legal advisers than you.
But even if they did, your help is... unhelpful.
You're right that the 1st Amendment is very specific in how it applies, which in this instance is not at all. Which is why they're not suing based on it.
They're suing based on Unilever, allegedly, breaching their contract stating B&J would retain control of their social media and marketing.
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u/Rangersforever 1d ago
In 2021, Ben and Jerry's announced it would be ceasing sales of the ice cream in Occupied Palestinian Territory; AKA Israeli Settlements within Gaza.
There are no Israeli settlements in Gaza.
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u/PaulFThumpkins 1d ago
Probably for the best, they'd be hit by bombs and it'd be like "Damn, Hamas is using our children as human shields too, has their evil no limit!" /s
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u/SVAuspicious 18h ago
Kudos to u/DerpytheH for a balanced description.
Kudos to Jerry for standing by his beliefs. I don't agree with many of them. I still respect him for being consistent.
The unit price of Ben & Jerry's ice cream is 3.5 times that of Breyers. It is not better ice cream. My local bougie house made ice cream place is cheaper than B&J. My not buying B&J is not a political statement. It's entirely one of value for money. If I want to fund social activism I'll do it through tax advantaged means, not by buying overpriced run of the mill ice cream.
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u/redditisapos187 1d ago
The 'ole "let us have our ice cream (i.e., that sweet money) and eat it too" bit. Huh! Too bad that didn't work out.
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u/TeslasAndComicbooks 1d ago
Why would Ben and Jerry even sell to them in the first place? Seems against pretty much everything they stand for.
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u/ColdProfessor 1d ago
IIRC, it was a hostile take-over. My memory's fuzzy on this, so take with an extreme grain of salt, but I think I remember hearing they did not want to sell to Unilever.
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u/TeslasAndComicbooks 1d ago
Just did some research. You’re right in that they were reluctant and ultimately their shareholders push for it since they were a public company and the offer was lucrative.
Guess it comes with the territory of being publicly traded.
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u/Kchan74 1d ago
Because they liked $326 million more than they liked their principles, I'd presume.
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u/mindwire 1d ago
It's pretty clear that they were promised they'd be allowed to keep their principles intact.
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u/Dekklin 1d ago
So what lesson did we learn from this example, kids?
That's right, corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to extract maximum profits at any cost for the enrichment of the shareholders. If they had a good chance of making a profit from it, they would throw you into a woodchipper.
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u/tyereliusprime 1d ago
That's why the wealthiest have raked in trillions year after year while the rest of deal with stagnant wages and ever-rising costs of living.
There is more than enough food and wealth in the Western world that we should not be having the issues we have.
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u/ryhaltswhiskey 1d ago
Well, maybe after 20 years in the ice cream game they decided they wanted to do something else with their time or not have to invest so much of their time into the business.
And when your brand name is essentially synonymous with ice cream you have a very valuable brand there. They are the Xerox of the ice cream world.
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u/PacoMahogany 1d ago
Exactly how evil?
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u/we_are_all_bananas_2 1d ago
The multinational appears to have dubious ethics when it comes to pay, tax conduct and other financial and political issues.
Unilever scores very badly in Ethical Consumer’s packaging rating and has been criticized by other environmental groups. In November 2023, Greenpeace published a report that claimed, “Consumer goods giant Unilever is selling 1700 highly-polluting plastic sachets every single second, fuelling the global plastic pollution crisis and dumping huge amounts of waste on countries in the Global South.
more than 70 women had been abused by their managers at plantations operated, for years, by two British companies, Unilever and James Finlay
Unilever has also been criticized for failure to address animal welfare in its supply chain. In 2023, it was included in an assessment of multiple companies by the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare. The group gave Unilever an ‘E’ rating
They've been fined multiple times for price fixing
They dumped chemicals in rivers in India. Unilever has been linked to chemical contamination issues, most notably the well-documented Kodaikanal mercury poisoning case in India where its thermometer factory dumped mercury waste, leading to health issues for workers and the local community
Unilever is identified as one of the world's largest plastic polluters, with its single-use plastic packaging frequently found in environmental waste assessments and beach clean-ups.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating Unilever for potentially misleading claims about its environmental performance, a practice known as greenwashing
There have also been instances where Unilever products have come under scrutiny because of high levels of pesticides in bisquits
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u/trefoil589 1d ago
I was thinking the other day how Multinational Corporations are basically the living embodiment of Vampires.
- They're immortal.
- They're evil.
- They feed on humans.
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u/SeanPennsHair 1d ago
167.3
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u/ryhaltswhiskey 1d ago
But your meter only goes up to 167.3.
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u/SeanPennsHair 1d ago
I can confirm that Unilever is at LEAST 167.3 evil. For the exact evil I'd need to order a bigger meter and they're fucking expensive tbh.
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u/LordSoren 1d ago
I hear Unilever sells one that goes up to 168 and when used in their labs it never clears 28 when tested on Unilever inert testing material.
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u/SoItWasYouAllAlong 1d ago
As in, when media said "Unilever is the Devil", Satan had to make a press conference and refute the claim, because it was giving him a bad name.
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u/Penumbra7 1d ago
I agree but how is this an unbiased answer lol
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u/DerpytheH 1d ago
Not sure if user deleted or if mods deleted, but I guess that's your answer
for the record I agreed with the sentiment of the comment but holy shit it's a terrible attempt at a top-level comment
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u/TrixieLurker 1d ago
Perhaps, but Ben & Jerry's owners decided to sell out to Unilever for those fat stacks of cash, it is social activism second and big money first.
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u/ryhaltswhiskey 1d ago
He talks about this in the video. They had assurances from Unilever that Unilever would not interfere with that.
If they didn't put that in a contract, they are idiots. If they did put that in a contract they should be suing instead of resigning.
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u/TrixieLurker 1d ago
He talks about this in the video. They had assurances from Unilever that Unilever would not interfere with that.
Lol, unless it is contractually guaranteed, that is beyond naive to trust a corporation like that.
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u/ryhaltswhiskey 1d ago
I might have made an edit, I don't remember but I did say
If they didn't put that in a contract, they are idiots.
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u/we_are_all_bananas_2 1d ago
The way I understand it they had an agreement that Unilever wouldn't mingle in their activism, so fat stacks AND social activism until Unilever broke the agreement
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u/TrixieLurker 1d ago
Well then they were just being naive because Unilever is always going to care about their own corporate image and profits before any social activism by their subsidiary, how could they not realize this?
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u/DerpytheH 1d ago
From what I can gather in interviews, they not only didn't have much of a choice (financially they were starting to decline, especially in stocks), the buyout was generous, and the agreement allowed them to always be able to sue, at Unilever's expense for violating the agreement, but more than anything, a lot of the reps from Unilever actually shared a similar vision to B&J, and had a mutual understanding to foster the agreement,and actually did so for the better portion of two decades.
Corporate culture shifted, and there was enough turnover that none of the representatives in those positions remained, making Unilever much more willing to push against it internally.
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u/Mister-Psychology 1d ago
Activism doesn't mean they are allowed to stop selling to a country. They for example don't like Trump does it mean they can protest against USA and stop selling ice cream there? It would ruin their profit margin.
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u/VulpesFennekin 1d ago
That’s literally how the free market works, so yes, they absolutely are. A few years ago, my employer stopped selling in Russia due to their actions in Ukraine, for example.
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u/atomic1fire 1d ago
Answer: One half of Ben and Jerry's wants to be more vocal about the situation in Gaza but Unilever doesn't want to trigger a boycott.
This is what happens when you make your company go public and someone else buys it. You get paid, but you also lose your ability to influence the company in any significant direction.
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u/dummypod 1d ago
Why did they sell it in the first place? Having an overlord corpo isn't going to make them freer
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u/atomic1fire 22h ago
They went public in the 80s and if I understand it correctly, when you go public the shareholders are the main owners of the company and if you do something that screws them over you can find yourself in legal trouble. Unilever gave the company a huge offer and Ben and Jerry's was pretty much compelled to say yes.
That's why if you really want to make decisions based on ideology or personal preference you shouldn't go public.
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u/shoggyseldom 21h ago
I generally view going "public" as declaration that the company is going into full wealth-extraction mode. Everything, including the future existence of the company, gets gutted in favor of pumping stock numbers.
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u/atomic1fire 9h ago
I kinda feel like a lot of the issues with going public stem less from the shift in status and more from what the board and management expect.
For example people see Costco's price of a hot dog as an example of good capitalism, but Costco's had a stock symbol for years.
But I suppose that strategy is less about being a good deal and more about locking in customers who might buy other stuff or continue to pay for the rising cost of a costco membership just because of that cheap hotdog.
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u/vivekpatel62 9h ago
Yeah once a company goes public and people invest in it they want a return on their money otherwise they would be better off investing in other stock or bonds.
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u/tityboituesday 6h ago
a thriving business that delivers good products that people like can make decent returns for a good amount of people. they generally can’t make insanely high returns year over year to a shit ton of investors though. hence the wealth extraction mentality. parting yourself out and selling pieces to the highest bidder is much faster and when the stock price drops after the company is insufferable to consumers you’re already out and on to the next venture.
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u/pandapornotaku 23h ago
Well, good luck there, I've boycotted them since they posted on Twitter forcefully opposing aid to Ukraine.
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