No more ‘happy cows’ for Ben & Jerry’s after lawsuit called claim ‘misleading’

Ben & Jerry’s packaging looks a little different now.

In July 2018, the Organic Consumers Association filed a lawsuit in Washington D.C. Superior Court against Ben & Jerry’s for what it called misleading claims on packaging about its products’ quality and environmental and animal welfare practices, according to a news release announcing the suit.

“Unilever reportedly spent more than $9 billion on advertising in 2017 alone,” OCA International Director Ronnie Cummins said in a statement in 2018. “A significant portion of that was spent to create the false perception that Ben & Jerry’s is committed to a clean environment and high animal welfare standards.”

A similar lawsuit was filed by another party in Vermont in October 2019, Delish reported. Last week, Ben & Jerry’s filed a motion to dismiss the 2019 lawsuit, saying it had removed a specific claim pertaining to “happy cows” from its packaging, a news release says.

Some packaging for the ice cream company’s products featured a statement claiming its ice cream comes from “happy cows.”

The 2019 lawsuit alleges that Ben & Jerry’s only obtains a small portion of milk and cream from “caring dairy” farms and that the rest comes from factory-style dairy operations. The plaintiffs say Ben & Jerry’s uses the claim to charge more for their product.

The lawsuit also asserts that consumers who see claims of “happy cows” on “caring dairy” farms “[do] not expect the products to be made with dairy produced on regular factory-style, mass production dairy operations.”

In Ben & Jerry’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the company says it never claimed to source its ingredients exclusively from “happy cows.”

The motion also calls the term “non-actionable puffery,” stating that happiness is opinion and can’t be measured objectively.

“While we haven’t done an official survey of our cows’ happiness, we’re proud of the work we’ve done with Vermont’s family farmers over the past 35 years, and we believe our Caring Dairy program is the most progressive in the industry,” a representative for the company said in a statement to McClatchy News. “We’re committed to building a resilient, regenerative dairy supply that benefits animals, people, and the planet.”

The company also said it removed the term “happy cows” from its packaging “many months ago,” according to the motion.

Cummins called the removal of the claim a win for consumers, but not the end of the road.

“This is just one small step toward more honest representation of the Ben & Jerry’s brand,” he said in the release. “OCA will continue, through our own ongoing litigation against Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company, Unilever, to push for Ben & Jerry’s either to live up to its remaining marketing claims, or to remove all claims that have no basis in fact.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2020 at 7:18 AM with the headline "No more ‘happy cows’ for Ben & Jerry’s after lawsuit called claim ‘misleading’."