Unilever PLC (LSE:ULVR) ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has left the company over the loss of independence imposed by its FTSE 100-listed parent, launching a website to 'free' the brand.
When Ben & Jerry's was taken over by Unilever in 2000, there was an agreement that protected the brand's social mission, with an independent board of directors created to focus on "preserving and expanding Ben & Jerry's social mission, brand integrity, and product quality".
Greenfield said in a letter that he was quitting due to Unilever putting a halt to the brand's social activism, with a FreeBenAndJerrys website launched to petition for the brand to be split off.
He said he could no longer "in good conscience" work for a business that had been "silenced" by Unilever.
It said the merger agreement negotiated with Unilever "enshrined our social mission and values in the company’s governance structure in perpetuity" but he had "come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone".
In 2021, Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, leading to the subsidiary's Israel division being sold off, which led Greenfield and co-founder Ben Cohen to sue Unilever, before a settlement was reached.
Last year, the US ice cream brand's board called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and later launched another lawsuit against the UK parent company.
A spokesperson for The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which is being spun off from Unilever, said: "We disagree with his perspective and have sought to engage both co-founders in a constructive conversation on how to strengthen Ben & Jerry's powerful values-based position in the world."
Greenfield and Cohen, who started their first shop in 1978 in Vermont after taking a $5 correspondence course in ice cream-making and raising $12,000 in borrowing and investment, say on the website that "using our business to make the world a better place gives our work its meaning," highlighting fair-trade, non-GMO product sourcing and support for various causes.
The FreeBenAndJerrys website said that while the Magnum Ice Cream Company is being spun off, Unilever is expected to retain a stake and the "leadership will be many of the same people involved in Unilever’s efforts to silence Ben & Jerry’s".
"That’s why we are on a mission to free Ben & Jerry’s from Magnum. Ben & Jerry’s cannot thrive under an organization that stifles its values and that buckles under political pressure.
"An independent Ben & Jerry’s will allow it to go back to its roots as a company driven by values, authenticity, and a belief that business has to be about more than just profitability."