Judge on ice cream marketing: Don’t have a cow

They say ice cream makes everybody happy. Even cows, maybe. Or not.

But that’s just an opinion, a federal judge on Thursday said in dismissing a lawsuit against the makers of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream over the claim that its product came from “happy cows.”

An environmental advocate had claimed in a proposed class-action suit that the company deceived consumers by saying it used milk and cream from “happy cows” on feel-good “Caring Dairy” farms to make its premium ice cream, according to Reuters.

The federal judge in Burlington, Vermont, rejected the claim that this “misleading marketing” enabled the ice cream company to push a socially conscious image and charge higher prices for its ice cream, even though it was found that more than half the milk and cream were mass-produced, according to the wire service.

In ruling that the “happy cows” claim was merely an opinion, the judge said the plaintiff did not show that reasonable consumers would buy its ice cream solely because of the company’s claims that the cows are happy.