(Reuters) – Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has departed from the ice cream brand he helped establish nearly half a century ago, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Greenfield argued that the Vermont-based company has lost its independence since UK parent Unilever curtailed its social activism, according to the report.
Reuters could not confirm the report. Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Greenfield said he could no longer “in good conscience” continue working for a company that had been “silenced” by Unilever, despite a merger agreement meant to safeguard the brand’s social mission, according to a letter by Greenfield to the consumer group cited by FT.
“That independence existed in no small part because of the unique merger agreement” that he and co-founder Ben Cohen had negotiated with Unilever, Greenfield wrote.
Last week, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen said that, amid tension with Unilever, the brand had attempted to engineer a sale to investors at a fair market value between $1.5-$2.5 billion, but the proposal was rejected.
Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have been at odds since at least 2021 when the Chubby Hubby ice cream maker said it would stop selling in the Israel-occupied West Bank. Ben & Jerry’s has sued its owner over alleged attempts to silence it and called the conflict in Gaza a “genocide,” unusual for a major U.S. brand.
(Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Harikrishnan Nair)
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