I can’t remember the last time I had Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Even when I was a liberal, it just seemed like they were trying too hard to show me how progressive they were. And when I became a conservative, it didn’t even occur to me to buy a pint. Lord knows, there are more than enough ice cream brands out there, and on the rare occasions that Ben & Jerry’s was the only choice, I decided to give my BMI a break for the day. Of course, the brand has never met a left-wing cause it didn’t like, including boycotting Israel, championing illegal immigration, and fighting for the environment. But as I have learned in my time on this earth, the more someone tells you how woke they are, the more they want to keep things hidden from you. I call it Brown’s Virtue Signal Equation. Sure, somebody else probably thought of it first, but I named it. So there.
As it turns out, Ben & Jerry’s had quite a bit to hide, and all of the woke posturing was probably used to keep their violations on the q.t. And I’m not talking about the secret recipe for butter pecan.* Ben & Jerry’s, the woke and vocal would-be savior of the oppressed, dispossessed, and downtrodden, was doing plenty of oppression of its own. And it was oppressing many of those people it said it loved so much.
FrontPage Magazine shined the light on the hypocrisy and, for that matter, the trafficking of human beings by the politically and socially enlightened ice cream giant. Back in 2021, a franchise owner for Ben & Jerry’s in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was busted for employing 12-year-olds. But that, gentle reader, was just the tip of the ice cream cone. In fact, compared to the other things that the company was up to, having 12-year-olds work seems pretty, well, vanilla.
Related: More of Biden’s Illegal Immigrant Minors Discovered as Child Laborers in U.S. Factories
Back in 2017, the website Crunchy Vegan, no less, reported that Ben & Jerry’s was using cocoa from west Africa’s Ivory Coast. The cocoa farms there are notorious for using child labor. I have no idea how that one managed to slip by unnoticed, but I suppose as long as you are saying the right things, people will turn a blind eye to what you do. FrontPage also noted that the company used farms that employed child labor for palm oil in Indonesia and vanilla in Madagascar.
Not only did Ben & Jerry’s ignore the child labor that was producing the raw materials for its product, but it was also “fighting” for open borders. And now we know why. Just before Trump’s inauguration, the company was using illegal immigrants to work in the milking process. The migrants had to live in barns without any heat during the winter in Vermont. They milked cows at midnight and sustained injuries from exploding milk bottles. One 14-year-old boy suffered a crushed hand when it was caught in an industrial milking machine. According to a 2017 article in the Vermont newspaper VT Digger, coyotes smuggled the immigrants across the border, and the usual networks brought them to the farms in Vermont. In addition, pimps brought girls in to meet the men for prostitution. These girls came to the United States as “unaccompanied minors.” The article itself is decidedly pro-migrant and takes a jab at Trump, but the fact that we have dangerous working conditions, combined with child labor and sex trafficking, cannot be ignored, no matter the source.
Yes, the situation at the border is to blame. As are the farm owners. These people or companies need to be investigated, fined, and, when applicable, jailed. But Ben & Jerry’s, which hates Donald Trump, conservatives, Israel, and anything and everything else that does not fit into the woke box, has some explaining to do. The company that set itself up as a supporter of BLM, BDS (boycott, divest, sanction Israel), illegal immigration, the environment, justice, and equity was benefiting from exploitation. By accusing conservatives and Israel of injustice, Ben & Jerry’s had the cover it needed to pursue an illegal and immoral business model. So never mind what Ben & Jerry’s does, just pay attention to what it says. And then shut up and eat your ice cream.
*Does anybody eat butter pecan? Full disclosure: I’m a chocolate-peanut butter man myself.
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