Celebrating 7 Years of Milk with Dignity!

Here at Ben & Jerry’s, we care about our ice cream from cow to cone. And that means that we want to support sustainable dairy practices that benefit farmers, farmworkers, cows, and the environment.

This month we’re excited to be celebrating the 7-year anniversary of an important partnership with Migrant Justice, a farmworker-led human rights organization. In October 2017, we became the first company to adopt and implement Migrant Justice’s industry-leading Milk With Dignity Program and we’re proud of the positive impact it’s had on farmworkers.

The partnership was the result of a lot of hard work and perseverance by the true heroes in Vermont’s dairy story: The pioneering farmworkers who developed the program and the forward-looking farmers who worked to bring it to life on farms across Vermont.

What Is Milk With Dignity?

We’re glad you asked! Milk With Dignity is an independent, farmworker-led human rights program which works with farmers and farmworkers to ensure dignified working conditions on dairy farms. Farms are required to commit to and actively implement the Milk With Dignity Program, which ensures that farmworkers have:

• Adequate breaks, time off, and paid sick time
• Safe working conditions
• Fair housing
• A wage increase supported by premiums paid to participating farms
• Access to a farmworker support hotline to bring questions and concerns to the Milk with Dignity Standards Council, with strict protections against retaliation
• Worker-to-worker education to ensure farmworkers know their rights and responsibilities under the program

What Makes Milk With Dignity Different?

The Milk With Dignity Program started with a grassroots, farmworker-led movement for better working conditions on dairy farms. Today, the Milk with Dignity Code of Conduct continues to be worker-led, and is overseen and implemented by a third party, the Milk with Dignity Standards Council. Milk with Dignity also uses a legally binding agreement with buyers (like us!) that charges an additional premium for their milk purchases to support increased wages and improved conditions for farmworkers. Finally, the standard includes enforcement measures that are largely absent from other programs, like providing farmworkers with a third-party-managed hotline for questions and concerns with protections in place against retaliation.

Celebrating 7 Years Of Cow-llaboration

Since we adopted the Milk With Dignity Program on October 3, 2017, the program has allowed farmers to invest in their teams and improve their appeal to new employees. Over the Milk with Dignity’s first seven years:

• The program has benefited hundreds of workers on scores of farms. Milk with Dignity currently covers more than 250 qualifying workers on 54 participating farms.
• Over $5.35 million has been invested directly in worker wages and bonuses, as well as improvements to housing and labor conditions, paid in part through Ben & Jerry’s premiums.
• The Standards Council has conducted more than 200 farm audits, including nearly 1,000 farmworker interviews.
• Workers have made more than 1,600 calls to the farmworker support line, resolving hundreds of violations to the Program’s Code of Conduct.

Read the full 2024 report here for more information. Farmworkers have seen higher wages, improved work schedules, better time off, and improved housing. So we’re raising a scoop in celebration of this groundbreaking partnership! We look forward to continuing our journey together to improve the livelihoods of the farmworkers and farmers who make our favorite ice cream flavors possible.

Join Milk with Dignity!

We are proud of this collaboration with Milk with Dignity and the positive impact it has brought to farms and farmworkers—but we don’t want to be the only ones supporting dignified working and housing conditions! We encourage all companies that buy dairy products to join Milk with Dignity.

You can also get involved as a consumer! Check out Migrant Justice and take action!