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You’ve always supported our joint struggle for an organic and equitable food system. For a chemical-free environment. For corporate accountability. For peace, justice and sustainability.

That mission requires us to strike at the heart of the absolute worst manifestation of our degenerative, exploitative, extractive industrial food and farming system—the $1-trillion factory farm industry.

Late yesterday, a New England donor, inspired by our campaign to force Ben & Jerry’s to go organic, made a generous offer.

We’re grateful because this generous offer validates our strategy: To erode Ben & Jerry’s brand so much that the company begins the long-overdue transition from Dirty Dairy to an organic regenerative system that respects and rewards farmers and farmworkers, doesn't abuse animals, no longer pollutes waterways or degrades soil, and produces a safer, organic consumer product.

The donor, who asked to remain anonymous, will match up to $25,000 in donations raised between now and midnight, Monday, August 21. That means your donation today will be worth twice as much.

Can you pitch in today to help us take advantage of this matching gift offer? Details here.

It’s tough to even know where to start with this one, but here goes.

A company called Impossible Foods, with $257 million in venture capital funding, recently launched its fake, genetically engineered Impossible Burger—even though, the FDA (supposedly in charge of food safety) can’t say if the burger’s “secret sauce”—soy leghemoglobin—is safe.

How can Impossible Foods put soy leghemoglobin in food if the FDA hasn’t deemed it safe? The New York Times explains:

The F.D.A.’s approval is not required for most new ingredients. Companies can hire consultants to run tests, and they have no obligation to inform the agency of their findings, a process of self-affirmation.”

While you let that sink in . . . here’s the other half of that story. Impossible Foods asked the FDA to weigh in on the safety of its “secret sauce” ingredient, even though it wasn’t required to. The agency did. This is what regulators wrote in a memo to Impossible Foods:

“F.D.A. believes the arguments presented, individually and collectively, do not establish the safety of soy leghemoglobin for consumption,” nor do they point to a general recognition of safety.”

Despite that statement, the Impossible Burger went to market. 

Sometimes the stars align. This is one of those times.

Not long after the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) announced that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream tested positive for glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, another story broke—one that validates the importance of finding glyphosate, even at low doses, in any food.

According to internal Monsanto documents, Monsanto forced the retraction of a critical long-term study, first published in 2012, showing that very low doses of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide—lower than those detected in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—caused serious liver and kidney damage in rats. Shortly before the study was retracted, the editor of the journal began working for Monsanto, under a consulting contract. (The study, led by G.E. Séralini, was republished in 2014, by the Environmental Sciences Europe).

Monsanto company officials weren’t too pleased when their internal emails went public. The New York Times reported that one Monsanto scientists wrote this in an internal email in 2001:

“If somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would react — with serious concern.”

It’s official. Ten of 11 samples of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream tested positive for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

It’s the latest in a long line of complaints against the ice cream brand that claims its social mission “seeks to meet human needs and eliminate the injustices in our local, national and international communities,” and that its focus is “on children and families, the environment and sustainable agriculture on family farms.”

Ben & Jerry’s shameless greenwashing, including its use of the word “natural” on its website, makes the company guilty of belonging to the $90-billion “natural” fraud industry that charges a premium for greenwashed products that are routinely produced with toxic chemicals, bad for human health and bad for the environment. The company knows full well that consumers see the word “natural” and think “healthy” and “sustainable.” Ben & Jerry’s knows it’s a scam—a very profitable one.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Ben & Jerry's CEO Jostein Solheim, Aka Scooper Man: 'Roundup-Ready' Ice Cream Is Not 'Natural,' or 'Socially Responsible.' Go Organic!

The most important thing we can do today as conscious consumers, farmers and food workers is to move away from industrial, GMO and factory-farm food toward an organic, pasture-based, soil-regenerative, humane, carbon-sequestering and climate-friendly agriculture system.

What’s standing in the way of this life-or-death transformation? Rampant greenwashing.

Perhaps no company personifies greenwashing more than Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s.  Ben & Jerry’s history—a start-up launched by two affable hippies, from a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vt., —is legendary. Despite selling out to Unilever in April 2000, the brand’s handlers have preserved its quirky, homespun image, and masterfully convinced consumers that Ben & Jerry’s has never strayed from its mission: “to make the world a better place.”

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) recently sent samples of Ben and Jerry’s top-selling ice cream brands to an independent testing lab for analysis. Ten out of 11 samples tested positive for Roundup (glyphosate and AMPA) herbicide contamination

So much for making the world a better place.