Organic Consumers Association

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 Shortly before the study was retracted, the editor of the journal began working for Monsanto, under a consulting contract.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.