{"id":36665,"date":"2025-09-18T03:48:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T03:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/18\/ben-jerrys-co-founder-resigns-claiming-parent-company-unilever-silenced-its-campaigning\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T03:48:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T03:48:26","slug":"ben-jerrys-co-founder-resigns-claiming-parent-company-unilever-silenced-its-campaigning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/18\/ben-jerrys-co-founder-resigns-claiming-parent-company-unilever-silenced-its-campaigning\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben & Jerry\u2019s co-founder resigns, claiming parent company Unilever \u2018silenced\u2019 its campaigning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry\u2019s ice cream brand, has stepped down from the company he started 47 years ago citing a retreat from its campaigning spirit under parent company Unilever.<\/p>\n

Greenfield wrote in an open letter late Tuesday night \u2014 shared on X by his co-founder Ben Cohen \u2014 that he could no longer \u2018in good conscience\u2019 remain an employee of the company and said the company had been \u2018silenced.\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

He said the company\u2019s values and campaigning work on \u2018peace, justice, and human rights\u2019 allowed it to be \u2018more than just an ice cream company\u2019 and said the independence to pursue this was guaranteed when Anglo-Dutch packaged food giant Unilever bought the brand in 2000 for $326 million.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Cohen\u2019s statement didn\u2019t mention Israel\u2019s ongoing military operation in Gaza, but Ben & Jerry\u2019s has been outspoken on the treatment of Palestinians for years and in 2021 withdrew sales from Israeli settlements in what it called \u2018Occupied Palestinian Territory.\u2019<\/p>\n

Greenfield\u2019s resignation comes five months after Ben & Jerry\u2019s filed a lawsuit accusing Unilever of firing its chief executive, David Stever, over his support for the brand\u2019s political activism. In November last year Ben & Jerry\u2019s filed another lawsuit accusing Unilever of silencing its public statements in support of Palestinian refugees.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone,\u2019 Greenfield said. <\/p>\n

\u2018And it\u2019s happening at a time when our country\u2019s current administration is attacking civil rights, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community,\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n

Jerry Greenfield, left, and Bennett Cohen, the founders of Ben and Jerry\u2019s founders, in Burlington, Vt., in 1987.<\/span>Toby Talbot \/ AP file<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Goldstein, the then president of Unilever Foods North America, said in a statement after the sale in 2000 that Unilever was \u2018in an ideal position to bring the Ben & Jerry\u2019s brand, values and socially responsible message to consumers worldwide.\u2019<\/p>\n

But now Greenfield claims Ben & Jerry\u2019s \u2018has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.\u2019 He said he would carry on campaigning on social justice issues outside the company.<\/p>\n

The financial performance of the Ben & Jerry\u2019s brand isn\u2019t made public but Unilever\u2019s ice cream division made 8.3 billion Euros ($9.8 billion) in revenue in 2024. Unilever is in the process of spinning off its ice cream division, however, into a separate entity which involves cutting some 7,500 jobs across its brands globally.<\/p>\n

Cohen and Greenfield founded the business in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, where it is still based.<\/p>\n

NBC News has contacted Unilever for comment overnight but had not received any at the time of publication.<\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry\u2019s ice cream brand, has stepped down from the company he started 47 years ago citing a retreat from its campaigning spirit under parent company Unilever. Greenfield wrote in an open letter late Tuesday night \u2014 shared on X by his co-founder Ben Cohen \u2014 that he could <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":36666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanfinancecore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}