BY BRIAN MONTEITH
Unilever abandons woke flavoured Ben & Jerry’s – it’s long overdue.
Unilever is getting out of the ice cream business to simplify its operations and save itself $870m over the next three years. But not only will it save itself a lot of dough, the move will also release it from having to explain and excuse the wacky behaviour of Ben & Jerry’s board (which sees manufacturing controversies as being as much a part of its job as making ice cream).
The Unilever ice cream brands include five of the world’s top-selling 10 ice-cream names, including Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, Wall’s, and Popsicle.
Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000 but remained a wholly owned autonomous subsidiary, meaning its independent board was able, over the past 24 years, to run a series of campaigns that embarrassed its parent company.
It’s not surprising Ben & Jerry’s board takes such a radical progressive view of the world given that its head, Anuradha Mittal, also runs the left-leaning think tank the Oakland Institute.
From advocating for defunding the police to promoting unrealistic socialist policies, Ben & Jerry’s has made it clear it values virtue signalling over serving its customers. It’s as if it has forgotten its primary purpose is to make ice cream, not to lecture us on how to live our lives.
Ben & Jerry’s has repeatedly shown it is willing to put its social justice crusades ahead of the bottom line. In its relentless pursuit of social justice causes, Ben & Jerry’s board has turned the iconic brand into a political megaphone, alienating customers with its repeated political posturing. Whether it’s boycotting certain markets or refusing to sell its products in Israeli settlements, it has demonstrated a reckless disregard for the interests of Unilever’s shareholders.
By wading into geopolitics and social issues with all the subtlety of bubble gum flavoured ice cream, the brand has managed to sour relationships and embolden adversaries. It’s almost like Ben & Jerry’s relishes baiting and alienating its customers through a series of missteps, including tweeting last year on July 4th – of all dates – that in its opinion America “exists on stolen Indigenous land” and it is committed to it being returned.
It has suggested Mount Rushmore be handed back to its ‘original owners’, called on its website for the police to be defunded and the money used for ‘social upliftment’.
In 2021 it also said it would not sell ice cream in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip to signal its support of Palestinian causes.
It’s virtue signalling isn’t limited to politics and social issues – it’s also prone to environmental hypocrisy, such as its anti-palm oil stance, ignoring the fact even the WWF believes sustainable palm oil production can actually benefit the planet. Instead of engaging constructively with the issue and supporting sustainable practices, the ice cream brand has opted for sensationalism and grandstanding, furthering its reputation as a purveyors of empty gestures.
While the ice cream maker hates palm oil due to its past links to deforestation, the rate of deforestation in countries like Malaysia has been trending lower for some time. Even Hannah Ritchie, the star number cruncher at the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data research unit, says in her book ‘Not The End of the World’ palm oil isn’t the villain it’s portrayed to be.
Ritchie points out if companies boycotted palm oil to replace it with alternatives – which have lower yields – we would need 5 to 10 times as much land devoted to oil crops. To illustrate this, Ritchie came up with a thought experiment: globally we currently use 322 million hectares (an area the size of India) to grow oil crops. If we were to get all of it from palm oil we’d need just 77 million hectares – four times less, freeing up a lot of land. But if we got it all from olive oil then we’d need 660 million hectares – or the equivalent of two Indias by landmass. But don’t expect Ben & Jerry to correct its propaganda.
Bakers don’t campaign about the environmental impact of dairy farming that provides the ingredients for ice cream – so why should the makers of a luxury item believe they have the moral high ground? Is it a marketing ploy or playing politics at their customers’ expense?
Whatever Unilever’s reasons for getting out of ice cream – and the biggest reason is likely that frozen-food businesses require intricate logistics networks built around keeping the products ice cold, which carries a sizeable carbon footprint – Unilever will be glad to see the back of Ben & Jerry’s.
In the end, consumers crave ice cream, not politics. And they prize truth over hypocrisy. If Ben & Jerry’s wants to survive in its new guise, the mad political posturing has to stop.
Brian Monteith is a former MEP and makes his own ice cream at home.