Ben & Jerry’s the final piece of the CyClone Dairy hoax?
March 30, 2009 by William K. Wolfrum
Ok, while I know I promised I was done with this subject, I just received a comment that seemed to make one final connection in the case of the pretend “CyClone Dairy,” a non-existant dairy that says it produces its milk from cloned cows.
“There is a certain large socially conscious company involved that will make sense once it comes out,” said Joe Blow.
This sent my mind directly to one company – Ben & Jerry’s.
Earlier I had pointed out that a design company called Vermont Design Works had been involved on the project. So a small part of this is the fact that Ben & Jerry’s is in Vermont.
Another part is that Ben & Jerry’s is strongly opposed to cloning animals.
The final part is this: Ben & Jerry’s works with Food & Water Watch … on cloning issues.
I have a call into Ben & Jerry’s but don’t really expect a response. And it doesn’t change my final conclusion about the CyClone Dairy PR campaign, it just means that I’ve come to believe that Ben & Jerry’s is the main cog in its engine. I still believe it’s an amateurish campaign. I still believe it will all unfold Wednesday, and I still believe that Food & Water Watch is involved.
But don’t be surprised if you see that Ben & Jerry’s is involved, as well.
Update: Oh, and I forgot to mention this: The first comment on the first post ever about Cyclone Dairy:
Posted by Ben & Jerry at 2009-03-24 15:16
It is satire.
Update: Well how about that.
–WKW
Ben and Jerry’s? Hardly. Ben and Jerry’s is wholly owned by Unilever. Not exactly the activist types they used to be.
And then there’s the top comment of SofiaB’s Post at FWW:
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blog/archive/2009/03/19/cyclone-dairy-putting-a-good-face-on-a-bad-practice/view
One wonders if FWW got suckered too. But as you said, they weighed in awfully early. Perhaps they got “tipped off” by B&J’s….?
(BTW. A sock puppet showed up over at my site, trying to start an argument about cloning after we posted about Cyclone Diary.)
Oh! You already knew about Melissa.
Thanks for the nod! And thanks for your detective work, William. Great job.
Great job, yourself. From my perspective your analysis was spot-on.
By far my favorite part of the website is in the FAQ
Q: Are there any ethical issues about cloning?
A: No.
Didn’t Ben & Jerry’s get bought up by some big corp. several years ago?
They were bought by Unilever but are autonomous from what I see.
[...] 2, 2009 Ben and Jerry are cloned cows Posted by jamonhalvaksz under Uncategorized | Tags: cloning, GMO | As revealed elsewhere, Ben and Jerry admit to being behind the Cyclone Dairy… an April fools joke, but not as well played as it could have been. [...]