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cali

(114,904 posts)
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 04:56 AM Jun 2014

Food Fight! In Vermont, Unilever Fights—and Ben & Jerry's Funds—Anti-GMO Activism

Ben & Jerry’s may be taking hits from fans over recent recipe changes, but the original foodie ice-cream brand is sticking with its progressive DNA and eliminating some 110 sources of ingredients that contain GMOs. The move echoes the ambitions of the brand's home state, Vermont, which recently became the first US state to mandate GMO labeling.

The move by Ben & Jerry’s also puts the Unilever-owned brand in interesting opposition to the expressed stand of its global parent company, which along with other members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association in the US is suing Vermont over the new law.

But this is the kind of cultural tension that Unilever signed up for when it acquired Ben & Jerry’s from founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield for $326 million in 2000. At the time, Unilever promised a hands-off policy concerning Ben & Jerry’s social consciousness, and by all accounts the acquiring company has basically complied with that promise over the years.


<snip>

Unilever, meanwhile, looks to be weakening on the GMO issue. In 2012, the company spent more than $450,000 to help defeat a GMO-labeling initiative at the ballot box in California, but obviously Unilever was just fine with Ben & Jerry’s going non-GMO—and loudly so. This might in part reflect the obvious fact that the heart of Unilever increasingly is in tune with the progressive and even anti-corporate values of Ben & Jerry’s.

The Netherlands-based CPG giant has become a trailblazer in sustainability strategy and execution, for example, with an agenda that includes halving the greenhouse gas impact of its products across their lifecycles by 2020 and sourcing 100 percent of its agricultural raw materials sustainably. Unilever also includes “social impact goals” in its new sustainability platform, Project Sunlight, such as “advancing human rights across its operations and supply chain,” according to Phillip Haid, head of a cause-marketing agency.

<snip>

http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2014/06/16/140616-Unilever-Ben-Jerrys-GMO.aspx

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Food Fight! In Vermont, Unilever Fights—and Ben & Jerry's Funds—Anti-GMO Activism (Original Post) cali Jun 2014 OP
Good for ben&jerry darkangel218 Jun 2014 #1
Unilever is evidently changing big time cali Jun 2014 #2
I dont trust uniliver. nt darkangel218 Jun 2014 #3
It's not about trust. It's about actions cali Jun 2014 #4
Change is always good. I hope it happens, but i wont hold my breath. darkangel218 Jun 2014 #5
 

cali

(114,904 posts)
2. Unilever is evidently changing big time
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 04:59 AM
Jun 2014

more from the article:

Unilever CEO Paul Polman has become increasingly outspoken—like B&J's founders—about the shortcomings of traditional “short-term-oriented” capitalism itself, for example, eliminating the company’s quarterly profit reporting. “We will,” he wrote recently for McKinsey consultants online, “go on resisting.”

 

cali

(114,904 posts)
4. It's not about trust. It's about actions
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 05:39 AM
Jun 2014

Their history is certainly not encouraging, but there are indications that Unilever is changing radically- whether for their own benefit or not, that would be a welcome change.

 

darkangel218

(13,985 posts)
5. Change is always good. I hope it happens, but i wont hold my breath.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 05:45 AM
Jun 2014

Why I'm saying this, is because uniliver has been pushing their products to consumers, masquerading as "help". As you know, I grew up in the former Eastern Block. Uniliver was the first one accessing us, after the wall fell down. Free baggies distributed at every corner, with so very few and small items, it wouldn't even last you one day.

It wasn't help, it was Marketing.

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