Ben & Jerry's Unethical Issues

A Newsweek article claimed Ben & Jerry's had a less than savory reputation among some franchisees who own Ben & Jerry stores. There were lots of complaints made and these complaints from the franchisees include shipments that weigh less than they are supposed to, big box stores buy at wholesale prices that undercut ice cream stores. Also, Ben & Jerry's does not acceptably promote or market franchises thus making it hard for the franchisee to make money. Franchisees also complained that the marketing material that persuaded them into buying and owning a Ben & Jerry's store was not entirely accurate. Most annoying for these franchisees were estimates about the amount of gross sales, in which these sales figures were created at high profile stores such as airports and casinos. 

Ben & Jerry's could have improved this by being more truthful regarding the sales figures that these franchises are likely to make, this has previously led to unhappiness from franchisees as they have spent lots of money on these stores only to be let down and not make as much money as they expected to make, Ben & Jerry's could also help to promote these franchisees and help them advertiseto gain a larger amount of customers. 

Ben & Jerry's purchases carbon offsets to even out its contribution to the global carbon output. Ben & Jerry's even sends its ice cream waste to a methane bio-digester.

   However, the watchdog group named the centre for science in the public interest claimed that labelling created by Ben & Jerry's may not have been correct. This watchdog group has been angered by the matter that Ben & Jerry';s labelled their products as 'all natural'. All but five of the 53 flavors of the Ben & Jerry's product line contain dextrose, alkalized cocoa, corn syrup, hydrogenated oils or other artificial flavors and chemically modified ingredients.

   The Centre for Science in the Public Interest posted to its website that their Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson said, “It’s sad that Ben & Jerry’s is trying to pass off products laden with these factory-spun ingredients as ‘natural,’ when there’s little natural about them. These ingredients are man-made and simply don’t occur in nature.”

this watchdog group is threatening to call the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) into the ring if Ben & Jerry's doesn't label their products correctly.

Ben & Jerry's has admitted that they did not label their products correctly. Its not-so-natural items are listed in the small print but listing ingredients in this way is against FDA regulations.

   Ben & Jerry's MUST improve on this by labelling their products correctly and not unethically labelling their products as all natural if they are not in fact all natural, this would mean they are being truthful and they would not be committing an offence if they continue to not follow FDA regulations. 

Ben and Jerry's faced the problem that there was too much ice cream in their factories. This issue occured a few years ago. After every run of Rainforest Crunch, Chunky Monkey, or Cherry Garcia, technicians at its Waterbury, Vermont, headquarters washed down their machines with hot water which left gallons of ice cream spill. At most companies they would have just simply got rid of the ice cream by washing it away. Ben & Jerry's, with its socially conscious operating philosophy, had another idea in which the ice cream was collected and given away to local pig farmers.

as good as this idea seemed, it created some peculiar issues. Some piglets that happily slurped Ben & Jerry's Homemade sugar water suffered from human-like arteriosclerosis. According to a local pig farmer, the slaughtered pigs that slurped down this homemade sugar water yielded a fattier pork. Ben & Jerry's never looked at the implications of performing these gestures and has led to much worse disasters, such as Ben Cohen's "rainforest harvest" which has created a lot of disruption in Brazil.

   Ben & Jerry's could give their ice cream to local schools and companies as this would be an effective way of getting rid of their waste products and this would not be affecting pig farmers stock.