Middle East Boycott Over Muhammad Cartoons
Arla's sales were seriously affected by a boycott of Danish products in the Middle East in 2006. Transnational anger among Muslims over satirical cartoons of Muhammed was the immediate cause of this. After the Danish government refused to condemn the cartoons or meet with eleven concerned ambassadors from Muslim nations, a boycott was organised, starting in Saudi Arabia and spreading across the Middle East. The Middle East is Arla's largest market outside of Europe.
On 3 February 2006, the company said that sales in the Middle East had stopped completely, costing the company US$2 million a day. Soon after the boycott began to affect Arla's sales, the Danish government met with Muslim ambassadors, the newspaper issued apologetic statements. Unfortunately for Arla, the boycott continued undiminished for some time.
In March 2006, Arla took out full-page advertising in Saudi Arabia, apologising for the cartoons and indicating Arla's great respect for Islam in the country. This raised controversy back in Denmark, where women's organisations and some Danish politicians criticised Arla, and called on Danish women to boycott Arla's products in Denmark.
In April 2006, the company said that its products are being placed back in shops in the Middle East. Before the boycott, it supplied 50,000 shops in the area. It announced that many of its largest clients in Saudi Arabia would start selling its butter and cheese on 8 April. Arla has started sponsoring humanitarian causes in the Middle East in order to reduce bad feelings from consumers.
Read more about this topic: Arla Foods
Famous quotes containing the words middle, east and/or boycott:
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Though all the East did quake to hear
Of Alexander’s dreadful name,
And all the West likewise did fear
To hear of Julius Caesar’s fame,”
—Robert Southwell (1561?–1595)
“I hear ... foreigners, who would boycott an employer if he hired a colored workman, complain of wrong and oppression, of low wages and long hours, clamoring for eight-hour systems ... ah, come with me, I feel like saying, I can show you workingmen’s wrong and workingmen’s toil which, could it speak, would send up a wail that might be heard from the Potomac to the Rio Grande; and should it unite and act, would shake this country from Carolina to California.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)