Yoplait - French (?)

3/28/03 | Cheesehead

[cheesehead]

Can you help me?
I had talked a friend into not eating her favorite Yoplait "Whips" yogurt.
She contacted Yoplait USA (name on container) and asked:

"Does any of the money I spend on Yoplait Whips go back to France?"

The response that was received stated:

"Thank you for contacting Yoplait-Colombo with your inquiry. Yoplait USA is 100% owned by General Mills, Inc., a U.S. company, and its products are all made in the U.S.
We respect your right to base your purchasing decisions on whatever criteria make sense to you.
We hope you will find this information helpful. Please let us know if we can help you again."

So help me - are Yoplait products from Yoplait USA not French products for the purpose of following a boycott of anything French?

[jackbill]

And just what is there about General Mills' response that you or your friend don't believe?

[visualops]

The easiest way to check into a company is to search online plus visit the corporate website.
General Mills' precursor was started in the US in 1866, and is still a US company.
Yoplait was introduced in 1977.
Just a reminder: because a brand name "sounds" French, or is taken from the French (for aesthetic or marketing reasons) does not mean it is French.

[visualops]

Well, I'll need to amend my response, further reading indicates Yoplait was founded in France, but the General Mills Yoplait is manufactured and sold here.

[cheesehead]

I didn't say the General Mills' response was not believed, this post was intended to determine if Yoplait should remain on the boycott list. It doesn't seem like it should.

[merrin]

http://www.yoplait.fr/

[merrin]

http://www.yoplaitusa.com/

[muawiyah]

From the Yoplait website we find:

"As a subsidiary of Sodiaal, the leading milk marketing cooperative in France, Yoplait has won recognition for the "little flower" on all five continents. It is now a symbol for fresh dairy products worldwide. ~~~~~ Yoplait's international expansion started in 1969, developing with subsidiaries and joint ventures in Europe and franchises in the rest of the world. ~~~~~~Yoplait is represented in almost 50 countries. It has the largest global coverage of any brand of fresh dairy products."

All of which means that Yoplait sold by General Mills in the United States is probably "made in the US" and probably uses milk taken from American cows.

On the other hand, a franchise fee (or some other item of value) is being paid to or exchanged with Sodiaal, which is in France, and which probably is also mixed up in the French cheese business in some manner (that milk thing is a clue), and for all we know there's a cheese-eating surrender monkey sitting at the very top of the pyramid of this very large dairy coop!

The question is, however, should we boycott French products or products with a French connection of some sort.

This is a matter of personal choice to a degree. For example I boycotted French products for about 15 years because I opposed the use of Dulles airport for SST flights (it was entirely too noisy). Eventually the French pulled out of Dulles, so my boycott must have worked.

Fortunately during that period I discovered I was severely lactose intolerant and I have been able to continue my boycott of French cream and double-creame cheeses without trouble!

When it comes to yoghurt, however, I find that a steady diet of Giant (owned by a Belgian firm) house-grand yoghurt is just too much. At the moment my refrigerator is filled with Yoplait, and I am sure that in the end we will get our pound of flesh out of those traitorous Islamofascist lackies.