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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFood Fight! In Vermont, Unilever Fights—and Ben & Jerry's Funds—Anti-GMO Activism
Ben & Jerrys 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 & Jerrys 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 & Jerrys from founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield for $326 million in 2000. At the time, Unilever promised a hands-off policy concerning Ben & Jerrys social consciousness, and by all accounts the acquiring company has basically complied with that promise over the years.
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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 & Jerrys going non-GMOand 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 & Jerrys.
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.
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http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2014/06/16/140616-Unilever-Ben-Jerrys-GMO.aspx
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)And screw uniliver.
cali
(114,904 posts)more from the article:
Unilever CEO Paul Polman has become increasingly outspokenlike B&J's foundersabout the shortcomings of traditional short-term-oriented capitalism itself, for example, eliminating the companys quarterly profit reporting. We will, he wrote recently for McKinsey consultants online, go on resisting.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)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)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.