(Headline USA) Ben & Jerry’s parent company announced this week it was ditching the brand, along with several others, following years of controversy tied to Ben & Jerry’s leftist views.
It wasn’t entirely clear, however, that Unilever, , which also includes brands like Dove soap, planned to altogether abandon its notorious habit of woke virtue-signaling.
The British-based consumer goods company said it planned to separate itself from its ice-cream division—which includes Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, Cornetto, and Wall’s—and focus on fewer businesses in order to provide more quality products.
“Simplifying our portfolio and driving greater productivity will allow us to further unlock the potential of this business, supporting our ambition to position Unilever as a world-leading consumer goods company delivering strong, sustainable growth and enhanced profitability,” Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher said in a statement suggesting that the company had been undergoing some financial hardship of late.
The separation will affect more than 7,500 jobs and was expected to be complete by the end of 2025, the company added.
Ben & Jerry’s has created multiple controversies for Unilever by advocating radical leftist ideas. Last year on the Fourth of July, for example, the ice cream brandtweeted that the U.S. was founded “on stolen Indigenous land” and called for the government to return the land to Native Americans.
In the wake of the post, consumers boycotted Ben & Jerry’s, resulting in a loss of at least $2 billion in shares for Unilever.
Unilever also lost $111 million in investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which blamed Ben & Jerry’s boycott against Israel as the reason for pulling its funds.
Ben & Jerry’s has long supported the leftist boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, but went a step further in July 2021 when it announced it would no longer sell its products to Israelis in the West Bank.
Since then, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas and, most recently, North Carolina, have also divested their public employee retirement funds from Unilever.
