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Jerry Greenfield said he is quitting Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company he co-founded with Ben Cohen, accusing its parent conglomerate Unilever of breaking a promise on independence.
“It’s with a broken heart that I’ve decided I can no longer, in good conscience, and after 47 years, remain an employee of Ben & Jerry’s,” Greenfield said in a statement shared to social media by Cohen.
“I am resigning from the company Ben and I started back in 1978. This is one of the hardest and most painful decisions I’ve ever made.”
Greenfield said Unilever had “guaranteed” the independence of Ben & Jerry’s when it purchased the company in 2000, allowing it to pursue social justice and activist causes that were important to the founders.
“For more than twenty years under their ownership, Ben & Jerry’s stood up and spoke out in support of peace, justice, and human rights, not as abstract concepts, but in relation to real events happening in our world,” Greenfield said.
“That independence existed in no small part because of the unique merger agreement Ben and I negotiated with Unilever, one that enshrined our social mission and values in the company’s governance structure in perpetuity.
“It’s profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone.”
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