On its bicentenary the chocolate maker Cadbury is keener than ever to remind consumers of its deep connection with the British public: “Yours for 200 years”.
Well, not entirely. Since 2010 Cadbury has belonged first to Kraft then after 2012, to Mondelēz International, a US-based confectionery giant that still chooses to operate factories and pay taxes within Russia. In Ukraine Mondelēz was designated, in 2023, an “international sponsor of war”.
Its chairman and chief executive, Dirk Van de Put, prefers to think of the Mondelēz mission as “empowering people to snack right”. “Snacking made right” appears on every Mondelēz International website, including its Russian language one. “I remain humbled to advance the important work of Snacking Made Right for generations to come,” Van de Put concluded a recent statement, which reported that the related practice of “mindful snacking” is “being applied across our entire portfolio”. Including at Cadbury, presumably. Learn from Mondelēz how to “eat with intention and attention”. Or as it calls the practice on its Russian-language page, the collectable, limited-edition Cadbury 200th anniversary tin will remind you first of Mondelēz International, then of Van de Put, and then, inexorably, of the international arrest warrant for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Given the risk informed consumers will conclude, having taken Van de Put’s slogan to heart, that it can’t be right to snack on products from a company whose taxes could have helped fund the killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, the abduction of their children and obliteration of their homes, a cheerful online history of Cadbury dwelling on the vision of the founding family, is probably right to omit Mondelēz landmarks of the last few years. Cadbury’s delight in generosity and “lovely stories” (do you know about the Cadbury Secret Santa Postal Service?) might not be a great fit with the steadfast refusal by its owner, in the face of unending Russian murders and atrocities in Ukraine, to join other companies still divesting themselves, if only after long resistance, of assets in Russia.
Mindful Snacking hint: consider that just last week Russia added to its outrages, as the Guardian’s Luke Harding reported, with another exercise in cultural vandalism: the bombing of the Derzhprom, a historic, Unesco-listed building in Kharkiv, which had survived the Second World War. Another report brought to light extensive, previously unrecognised sexual torture of captive Ukrainian men and boys. Meanwhile, the Grocery Gazette reports a jump in Mondelēz’s third quarter profits. Van de Put called the figures “robust”.
On the Yale university website that tracks companies still refusing to leave Russia, more than 1,000 having now done so, Mondelēz is categorised as “buying time”. Its excuses for not quitting to date have included those familiar from like-minded time-buyers, of wanting to prevent the company being seized, or having its profits benefit a friend of Putin. Van de Put has even argued, as if their for-profit sales in Russia are a kind of humanitarian project, that biscuits are a “breakfast item”. It’s not long since Unilever, whose brands include Marmite and Dove, was attempting equally feeble justifications. But earlier this month – two years and many tax contributions too late – Unilever, having avoided seizure, finally sold its Russian operation to the Arnest Group. The French retailer Auchan is reportedly also close to an exit.
What would it take to make Mondelēz (and fellow stayers including PepsiCo and Nestlé) follow suit? While a Nordic boycott of Mondelēz products, including the end of its royal supplier status in Sweden, has yet to bring about divestment, it was enough in 2023 to rattle the company’s Europe president. In a memo seen by Reuters, he complained about “being singled out and treated differently”.
In the UK, campaigners from B4Ukraine have identified the potential of Cadbury, still in the Midlands and still trading on its enlightened, originally Quaker values, as another route to shaming the multifaceted multinational whose name (“pronounced mohn-dah-LEEZ”) was made up in 2012. It is asking for the revoking of a royal warrant awarded to Cadbury by the late queen, and, from the new mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker, a statement condemning Mondelēz. “The values that build Cadbury,” B4Ukraine reminds Parker, probably drawing on the glowing account provided by Cadbury World historians, “values of community, fairness and pacificism – are not just history, they are principles that today are sorely in need of defending.”
Step forward, then, Van de Put and his mindful snacking, a technique, the company suggests, to “be practised anywhere, anytime and by anyone”. The Cadbury Christmas range offers a host of opportunities for supporters of Ukraine to mindfully decide if they want to snack, especially in the season of peace and goodwill, on products distributed by a multinational whose tax revenues, however far away, are potentially funding the Russian invasion. Can you ever totally “enjoy the moment” with an international sponsor of war?
A Mondelēz Cadbury advent calendar could prove, from many mindful perspectives, particularly troubling. Even a child’s build-your-own Cadbury train with Oreo wheels might seem ineradicably contaminated, upon mindful consideration, by Van de Put-style business philosophy. Investors, he told the FT in February, do not “morally care” if businesses stay in Russia. The general secretary of Wespath, a faith-based US investment company, promptly called Van de Put’s statement “tin-eared and false”.
In an earlier discussion of Mondelēz’s Russia options, in October 2022, Van de Put appeared to suggest that the war was not yet bad enough to occasion the company’s withdrawal: “if the situation gets worse, we might have to take other decisions”. Two years on, a report from the UN high commissioner for human rights is headlined, “Worsening impact on civilians of Russia’s attack, torture of prisoners of war”. Worsening enough to convince him? Or would it be simpler to change Mondelēz’s “Snacking Made Right” to something more closely resembling the truth?
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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