Why Ben & Jerry’s Needs to Start Living Up To Its Own Hype
Ben & Jerry’s announcement that it is to launch an organic ice cream line in 2018 is basically a ‘spoiler’ timed to deflect attention away from the fact that many of its products have been found to contain traces of the herbicide glyphosate, writes Pat Thomas
The announcement that Ben & Jerry’s will be bringing out an organic line and will also aim to be free of the toxic herbicide glyphosate by 2020 has been greeted warmly by industry and green groups alike.
But is there more to the story than most of the reports would have you believe? Of course there is.
The announcement was essentially ‘spoiler’ timed to deflect attention way from the fact that sampling of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the EU revealed worrying traces of glyphosate in nearly all of them – 13 out of 14 to be exact.
Levels in the UK samples were the highest of all and in line with what some independent scientists say are those shown to cause liver disease in laboratory animals over the longer term.
Ben and Jerry’s simultaneously dismissed the findings – as they did earlier in the year when testing by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) revealed a similar picture in the US – and went to great lengths to show it was doing something about them.
My group, Beyond GM worked with the OCA on this initiative and supplied the UK samples of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
We agreed to become involved because we are concerned by the increasing levels of glyphosate being used on food crops in the UK and the EU. In addition, conventionally reared livestock in the EU are also fed on GM crops, mainly soya, which is also sprayed heavily with glyphosate. That means there are multiple pathways for this known hormone-disrupter and probable carcinogen to get into our food.
While superficially positive, the response by Ben & Jerry’s involves very little actual strategy or commitment. The company has been under pressure for some time to transition to an organic supply chain, in part because of the reports of how its dairy herd in Vermont is contributing to water pollution there. It is likely that some sort of move in this direction was already in the pipeline and circumstances simply forced the company’s hand.
It’s worth noting also that the new organic range is a line that will sit within the company’s existing non-organic range, and only in the US. It will, by the company’s estimates account for just 6% of total sales in the US. It is also is also important to note that the organic commitment is to the dairy base only, not the cereal ingredients – which are the most likely source of the glyphosate.
For the foreseeable future, for ice cream lovers in the UK and Europe it’s a case of “let them eat cookie dough” – or switch to an already certified organic brand, of when there are several excellent examples.
The glyphosate free by 2020 claim is more troubling. It is hard to see how the company can easily make good on this future promise, especially if regulators world-wide continue to ignore data on the herbicide’s toxicity and approve its use. As long as glyphosate is on the market, farmers will keep using it, and Ben & Jerry’s may struggle to find a large enough supply of glyphosate free ingredients.
And that really is the issue. This is a Ben & Jerry’s problem, certainly, but the fact that we cannot seem to get pesticide residues out of our food means it is also a much wider problem of a dysfunctional food system.
Take away the funky cartoons and packaging and Ben & Jerry’s is just another large industrial food producer, functioning within an even larger system that is dysfunctional at best and dangerous at worst.
Increasingly frequent reports of food scares – from horsemeat burgers, to hepatitis sausages, to insecticide-containing eggs, to chicken past its sell-by date being repackaged for sale, to the free fruit and vegetables for school kids contaminated with higher levels of pesticides than conventional produce – show just how often that industrial food system gets it wrong.
The promised moves by Ben & Jerry’s are superficially positive, but they don’t really go far enough and they didn’t spring out of thin air. They come, from a company which, as the analysis on our website shows, is under pressure on many sides to actually live up to its own hype.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
- This blog first appeared on the Natural Products Global website.
