‘Milk With Dignity’ designed to ensure sustainability, improve conditions
(From the Office of General Assembly Communications.) In a public letter to the CEO of Ben & Jerry’s, Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson, II, has implored Jostein Solheim to honor his commitment and sign onto the Milk With Dignity program so that the anticipated transformational gains may become a reality in Vermont’s dairy industry.
In his letter to Jostein Solheim, Nelson writes: “… you have the ability to dramatically improve the human rights of Vermont farmworkers and ensure the sustainability of Vermont dairy farmers by joining this program.” The Milk With Dignity program was developed by Migrant Justice, a human rights organization of Vermont dairy farmworkers.
Migrant Justice has been urging Ben & Jerry’s to work with them to end farmworker poverty and dangerous working conditions and to ensure the sustainability of small Vermont dairy farmers through the Milk With Dignity program.
This program was modeled on the extraordinary success of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, which uses the power of retail purchasing to elevate human rights in the U.S. tomato industry and defined a new paradigm of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) that could be replicated.
The WSR paradigm has also been used in the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety and was lifted up in the most recent 222nd General Assembly (2016) policy on ending slavery in supply chains.
Ben & Jerry’s has distinguished itself for its commitment to social justice and had, in 2015, agreed to the Milk With Dignity program in principle. But to date, the company has not signed a formal agreement that would make Milk With Dignity a reality for farmworkers struggling to survive in difficult working conditions or small Vermont dairy farmers endeavoring to stay afloat in a competitive market.
The full text of Nelson’s letter, dated June 23, 2017:
Mr. Jostein Solheim
Chief Executive Officer
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc.
30 Community Drive
South Burlington, VT 05403-6828
Dear Mr. Solheim:
I am writing on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to implore you to honor your June 2015 commitment to enter into a legally binding agreement to join the Milk with Dignity Program developed by Migrant Justice.
With a stroke of your pen, you have the ability to dramatically improve the human rights of Vermont farmworkers and ensure the sustainability of Vermont dairy farmers by joining this program, whose Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) principals have already been proven uniquely effective elsewhere.
The 1.4 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) has worked in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers since 2002 to help bring, now, fourteen corporations into the Fair Food Program. The program has been internationally recognized for its comprehensive and swift gains in farmworker rights even as it has helped corporations establish true risk management by eradicating what had been endemic human rights abuses.
When our church’s efforts began with the farmworkers, we were hopeful and dedicated but had to labor in faith for that which was not yet seen. It is hard to describe the joy that has come from seeing these hopes turn into true rights, realized by thousands of human beings, our sisters and brothers, who had been too-long denied.
I share this because Ben ‘n Jerry’s is positioned to inaugurate similar gains in the Vermont dairy industry. Indeed these gains cannot be done without you, because in the Milk With Dignity Program your purchasing would buttress these advances by agreeing to only purchase milk from suppliers that agree to, and are in good standing with, a rights-based code of conduct that has been designed by and for workers.
I urge you, do not delay any longer. Every day is a day that farmworkers continue to suffer, farms are stretched further, and your customers grow more impatient. Sign in fact what you have already agreed to in principle, so that these anticipated transformational gains in human rights and sustainability may become a reality in Vermont’s dairy industry.
The Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
10 Comments. Leave new
The continuing deconstruction and devolving of the PCUSA into a weak and pathetic equivalent to a yelping dog on the Leftist blogisphere is this. A reflexively liberal Stated Clerk takes to lecture a historically reflexively leftest entity on corporate governance and ethics. This is much the equivalent of two unreconstructed old socialists debating the placement of a comma on some manifesto or document. The intellectual curiosity and interest of Louisville to the continued death spiral of their own organization begins and end at the point of viewing their own churches, and or members, as some sort of magic box or source where per capita is derived, and if their paycheck clears every two weeks. As long as the second clause happens, life is good at the banks of the Ohio.
So,…there is evidence that the Vermont Dairy industry is using migrant dairy farm workers because they do not have the same civil rights, nor access to the protections of the law, as any American citizen would.
As such, The Vermont Dairy Industry, and Ben and Jerry’s in particular, is profiting from economic slavery, and Ben and Jerry’s is ignoring the human suffering and human cost of producing their ice cream products.
Why the anger against the PC-USA then?
As a private citizen, I applaud him for stepping out and trying to do some good for the underrepresented dairy workers. As a representative of the PCUSA, I say he has no business saying he represents Presbyterians as a group for anything in the public sector.
The religious and secular Left, one in the same, employ two language styles or techniques when dealing with people they disagree with. One is hyperbole, such as what Mark does in “economic slavery in Vermont”. This is Vermont, the least religious, most secular region in the nation. One dominated by socialists on the local and state levels of government. I doubt. very much a line could be drawn to Vermont and say, South Carolina circa 1850. The other is reduction to the absurd. Such as “police as racists”. A common refrain heard often at PCUSA gatherings, NEXT, Dis Grace, “Big Tent” today. The current gathering where it has gotten so bad that out of the 600 or so reported present, close to on third are PCUSA staff and employees. In essence the PCUSA now has to pay people to attend their own functions. It is the equivalent to handing $20 bills to passers by and asking then to come to church next door.
The end result of such language tactics of course is to silence, demonize, contort language and expression of thought in such a way to try to control the narrative and flow of discussion. They certainly do not like it when called out on their abuses of language, and take moral indignation when you question their presumed intellectual and or moral superiority. I just wonder what the cows have to say on all of this. I do hope Ben and Jerry treats them well after all.
Since when did the louisville sluggers start speaking for the pcusa as a whole, he’s entitled to his positions as a private citizen, not to use his title to speak for the rest of us, even if it’s for a good cause.
He must not have anything better to do than worry about some petty labor dispute. No reason to handle the issue of the denomination’s rapidly empty pews.
I wonder if the Stated Clerk is now going to call for a denomination-wide boycott of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream? Such a step would be hilarious; one Leftist entity boycotting another! The only thing better would be a call to boycott National Public Radio for some similar lack of Progressive Perfectionism.
If he spent more time thinking of how to spread the gospel instead of the milk industry, maybe his denomination would not be dying. I get the impression that these guys really don’t care much about actual religion.
I think you’re going to have to get into the Wayback Machine for your answer. The front office was “speaking for the rest of us” while the office was still in New York City. Some people thought moving the office to Louisville would give the front office staff more contact with the Heartland people and slow the denomination’s slide into irrelevance. So much for genuine prophets inhabiting the God Box!
As a member of the PCUSA, I in no way support J Herbert Nelson ll
Why does he assume he is speaking for all 1.4 Million?
Perhaps he forgets that we used to be almost 3 million?