Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has announced his resignation from the company, accusing parent company Unilever of limiting the ice-cream brand’s ability to speak out on social issues.
The ice cream company, which operates multiple ‘scoop shops’ in Australia and is stocked widely across Australian supermarkets, launched in 1978 and is has a decades-long history of being outspoken on social and political issues. Locally, it has been an advocate for action on the climate crisis, marriage equality, fairtrade, and other issues. A list of the issues the company is concerned about can be found on its website.
When Unilever bought the brand in 2000 for $326 million, part of the agreement negotiated involved protections to enable Ben & Jerry’s to continue to speak out on social and political issues.
In a letter published to the Free Ben & Jerry’s website, which is focused on the efforts by Ben & Jerry’s to break free from Unilever as it plans to de-merge its ice cream business under Magnum Ice Cream Company, Greenfield published his resignation letter.
“It’s with a broken heart that I’ve decided I can no longer, in good conscience, and after 47 years, remain an employee of Ben & Jerry’s. I am resigning from the company Ben and I started back in 1978. This is one of the hardest and most painful decisions I’ve ever made,” Greenfield wrote in the letter.
Later in the letter he wrote: “And it’s happening at a time when our country’s current administration is attacking civil rights, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community. Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important — and yet Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power. It’s easy to stand up and speak out when there’s nothing at risk. The real test of values is when times are challenging and you have something to lose.”
Not mentioned in the letter is the tension surrounding the war in Gaza, which is prominently identified as a concern on the Free Ben & Jerry’s website. It’s an issue of concern for Ben & Jerry’s. Co-founder Ben Cohen was arrested earlier this year after disrupting a Senate hearing to protest US military aid to Israel and humanitarian conditions in Gaza and in 2022 Ben & Jerry’s ended its licensing agreement with a company distributing the brand into the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OTP).
Greenfield and Cohen have both been vocal in their push for Ben & Jerry’s to operate as an independently owned company again. In an interview with NBC today, Cohen has publicly backed Greenfield, saying that his decision to quit was the result of feeling muzzled and impacting on his general health. Cohen has said that he plans to keep fighting.