Political Audit: Mars

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

No public statement by Mars, Incorporated specifically addressing the Israel-Palestine conflict, Gaza, or a ceasefire was located on Mars’s official press-release or news channel. No public evidence identified.

By contrast, Mars has issued specific, dated public statements on the Russia-Ukraine war: in a letter response to B4Ukraine, Mars indicated it would “scale back” Russian operations, “refocus” on “feeding the Russian people and pets,” suspend new investment and advertising, and direct any profits from its Russian business to humanitarian causes ¹. Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NAZK) nonetheless designated Mars an “international sponsor of the war” on 1 September 2023, citing continued operation of roughly 10 factories, approximately 6,000 employees, and $2.45–2.94 billion in annual Russian revenue ². This designation was independently reported by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and the Kyiv Independent ³⁴. As of a 5 February 2026 update, the KSE Institute’s Leave Russia tracker rates Mars “Stay/Continue Operations,” noting a June 2025 warehouse lease in Russia and a February 2026 price increase, indicating ongoing rather than discontinued activity ⁵. B4Ukraine separately documented Mars leasing a 40,000 sqm warehouse in Russia after having pledged to halt new investment ⁶, and issued a public call, alongside PepsiCo, for the company to exit Russia after Ukraine’s “International Sponsors of War” designation ⁷.

Mars also made a public commitment on COVID-19, pledging $20 million in cash and in-kind support to communities in April 2020 ⁸, and then-CEO Grant Reid made public remarks tying Mars to addressing “systemic racial injustice” amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement ⁹. Mars therefore has documented, dated, on-the-record public statements for Ukraine, COVID-19, and racial-justice matters, but no located public statement on Israel-Gaza - a documented asymmetry rather than an inference. No public evidence identified.

Where Mars discusses its Israel-facing commercial activity, the framing is uniformly commercial and scientific rather than geopolitical: Mars’s President of Innovation, Science, Technology & Mars Edge stated the company is “passionate about leveraging leading science and technology to innovate,” and Mars Advanced Research Institute’s VP said Mars was “eager to partner with JVP and tap into the innovative ecosystem of the Israeli food, health and technology community” ¹⁰.

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

Mars Wrigley Israel Ltd, registered at 26 Zarhin St., Raanana, in Israel’s Central District, is listed as an active wholesale merchant of nondurable goods, with recorded export shipment activity as recently as 9 October 2024 ¹¹¹². This registered activity is located inside Israel’s internationally recognized 1967 borders rather than the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Mars maintains a dedicated “Legal Israel” corporate disclosure page for this entity ¹³.

Feldman Ice Cream signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Mars, Incorporated around 6 March 2019 to market seven Mars-branded chocolate ice cream lines - Mars, Snickers, Twix, M&M’s, Maltesers, Galaxy, and Bounty - through Feldman’s roughly 70 stores plus supermarket, grocery, and kiosk channels across Israel ¹⁴¹⁵; the subsequent status of this agreement (renewal or discontinuation) is not confirmed by any source located in this review. Separately, multiple low-tier boycott-guide sites assert that Mars distributes chocolate in Israel via Strauss Group ¹⁶¹⁷, but no primary source - from Mars, Strauss, or contemporaneous business press - corroborating a Mars–Strauss distribution deal was identified; the only verifiable, dated Israeli distribution partner identified is Feldman Ice Cream, and only for ice cream.

Mars announced a “first-of-its-kind” R&D partnership with Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) on 15 May 2019, under which Mars - via Mars Edge and the Mars Advanced Research Institute (MARI) - supports Israeli foodtech start-ups and collaborates with Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, the Technion, Migal (Galilee Research Institute, Kiryat Shmona/Upper Galilee), and Tel Hai College ^10181920. This partnership is corroborated as ongoing through later MARI program references on Mars’s own site ²¹. JVP’s founder, Erel Margalit, is a former Knesset member for the Labor Party (2013–2017) ²²; no evidence linking Margalit or JVP specifically to settlement enterprises was identified.

Mars, Incorporated does not appear to be listed in the OHCHR “Database of Business Enterprises” maintained pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions, per the September 2025 update announcement covering 158 listed entities ²³. No public evidence identified of Mars’s direct inclusion. Mars is also not named in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23, 2 July 2025) ²⁴, a finding corroborated by an independent summary listing the roughly 30–45 companies the report does name ²⁵. No public evidence identified of Mars, Mars Wrigley, Kellanova, Kellogg’s, or Strauss Group appearing in that report.

Mars completed its approximately $36 billion acquisition of Kellanova on 11 December 2025, making Kellanova (Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, RXBAR, and international Kellogg’s cereal brands) a Mars subsidiary ²⁶²⁷. A single, not-independently-verifiable source claims Kellanova’s exclusive Israeli distributor, Diplomat Group (Diplomat Distributors 1968 Ltd., Airport City, Israel), supplies Israeli institutional markets including IDF canteens and West Bank settlements, and holds “Essential Enterprise” status servicing the Ministry of Defense and Israel Prison Service ²⁸. Diplomat Global’s own vendor page confirms Kellogg’s and Pringles as listed brands distributed by Diplomat Israel ²⁹, but Diplomat’s own “About Us” page makes no mention of IMOD, IDF, Prison Service, or “Essential Enterprise” status ³⁰, and the AFSC Investigate company database contains no entry for Diplomat Group, Kellanova, or Kellogg’s ³¹. This IDF/settlement-supply claim should be treated as single-source and unverified pending primary documentation. Separately, Kellanova/Pringles was named, without cited evidence, on a viral Indonesian/Malaysian social-media boycott list alongside 121 other brands, with the South China Morning Post explicitly noting the underlying list provides “no evidence” for its affiliation claims ³².

Legal & regulatory scrutiny: No lawsuit, regulatory action, or OECD National Contact Point complaint specific to Mars’s Israel-Palestine conduct was identified. No public evidence identified. One unrelated Mars litigation, International Rights Advocates v. Mars, Incorporated, concerns child/forced-labor allegations in West African cocoa sourcing and is not related to Israel-Palestine ³³.

Civil society and boycott campaigns: Mars is not included on the BDS Movement’s official “Priority Targeting” boycott list dated 6 December 2024 ³⁴, nor on Ethical Consumer’s Palestine boycott list ³⁵. Grassroots and informal boycott activity nonetheless exists on low-authority sites that cite the 2019 JVP partnership as their sole evidentiary basis for listing Mars, Snickers, and Royal Canin as “secondary targets” ¹⁶¹⁷; these sources do not meet Tier-1/Tier-2 sourcing standards, and their claim that “BDS Movement’s 2024 report” formally designated Mars a secondary target could not be corroborated against BDS Movement’s own published materials ³⁴.

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

No reports of HR actions, terminations, or disciplinary measures against Mars employees over pro-Palestinian speech, symbols, or union activity were identified. No public evidence identified. Mars is a consumer packaged-goods and petcare company that does not operate a content, search, or social-media platform subject to algorithmic-moderation scrutiny, and No public evidence identified of platform or editorial policy issues applies to it.

On retail and supply-chain practices, a 2019 CJEU ruling established that products from Israeli settlements sold in the EU must be labeled with their settlement origin ³⁶, but no Mars-specific product-labeling, sourcing, or regulatory action tying Mars products to Israeli-settlement origin was identified. No public evidence identified for Mars specifically. Mars maintains a general, publicly posted Human Rights Policy addressing supply-chain conduct broadly, without any Israel-Palestine-specific provisions identified within it ³².

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

No evidence of Mars using military heritage, defense-sector ties, or state-security origins in its commercial branding was identified. No public evidence identified. No evidence of Mars accepting state honors, hosting Israeli government officials, or sponsoring “Brand Israel”-type state PR campaigns was found. No public evidence identified.

The one verified institutional tie identified is the JVP-brokered R&D partnership’s formal collaboration with named Israeli academic institutions - Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, the Technion, Migal, and Tel Hai College - which is academic and research-oriented in framing rather than governmental ^10181920.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

Mars’s own public policy page states that the company “does not make financial contributions to candidates, or to political parties or committees,” does not “contribute corporate funds to support electioneering communications,” and does not have an employee PAC ³⁷. OpenSecrets records confirm Mars, Inc. reports US federal lobbying expenditure (approximately $1,000,000 in 2025 per available filings) covering trade issues such as Miscellaneous Tariff Bill/GSP reauthorization, with no Israel- or Middle-East-specific lobbying activity identified in the reviewed filings ³⁸. No PAC donations, FEC filings, or CFI/AIPAC/FIDF/JNF donor-list appearances for Mars, Incorporated or its named principals were identified. No public evidence identified.

A “Mars Family Trust” appears as a donor to the Jerusalem Foundation, funding “Chai Preschool” and “Caring Community” projects with no amounts or dates disclosed ³⁹, but this entity’s identity and affiliation with the Mars, Incorporated controlling family could not be confirmed. Separately, “Mars Family Foundation Inc.” (Franklin, WI) is confirmed to be unaffiliated with Mars, Incorporated ⁴⁰. No public evidence identified of confirmed FIDF, JNF/KKL, Lev Echad, Regavim, Im Tirtzu, or comparable military-welfare or settlement-organization financing by the Mars, Incorporated controlling family.

No evidence of Mars directing free services, logistics, or infrastructure to Israeli state, military, or state-aligned NGO efforts during the current conflict was identified. No public evidence identified. By contrast, Mars’s COVID-19 response - a $20 million cash and in-kind pledge in April 2020 - is a documented, dated instance of crisis-related resource mobilization in a different context ⁸.

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

Mars, Incorporated is a privately held, family-owned company in which John Mars and Jacqueline Mars, children of Forrest E. Mars Sr., each hold roughly one-third ownership, with descendants of Forrest Mars Jr. holding the remaining third ⁴¹⁴². No state-held “golden share” or state ownership interest was identified. No public evidence identified of a state-linked governance structure, and the corporate charter and mission are commercial - confectionery, petcare, food, and veterinary health - with no evidence of a charter tying the company’s primary mandate to any state’s geopolitical goals.

Because Mars has no public equity or shareholder base, standard SEC equity-proxy or shareholder-resolution mechanisms - used at public companies for Israel-related human-rights resolutions - do not apply to it ³. This structurally forecloses a “shareholder-resolution suppression” sub-category, since there is no public shareholder base to submit such resolutions. No public evidence identified of any Israel-Palestine-related shareholder proposal at Mars.

Executive & Leadership Footprint

Poul Weihrauch has served as CEO since September 2022, the first non-family CEO in Mars’s history ⁴³. No personal statements, donations, or board affiliations regarding Israel-Palestine were identified for him. No public evidence identified on Israel-Palestine specifically. B4Ukraine directed a letter specifically to Weihrauch regarding Mars’s Russia operations, not Israel ¹.

Stephen Badger, a Mars family member and son of Jacqueline Mars, has served on Mars’s board since 2008 and as Chairman in 2011–2014 and 2017–2020; his identified additional board and advisory roles - Island Press, Permacultura Latin America, The Africa Society, and others - are unrelated to Israel or to pro-Israel/anti-BDS advocacy ⁴⁴. No public evidence identified of Israel-related affiliations for Badger.

Jean-Christophe Flatin (President, Innovation, Science, Technology & Mars Edge) and George Graham (VP, Mars Advanced Research Institute) are the named Mars signatories and quoted executives on the 2019 JVP partnership ¹⁰. No public evidence identified of further personal Israel-related financial or advocacy activity - donations, board seats in pro-Israel organizations, or anti-BDS lobbying - for either individual beyond their stated professional roles in the R&D partnership. No evidence was found of any Mars family member’s personal donation to FIDF, JNF, Regavim, Im Tirtzu, or comparable organizations, nor of board seats in CFI, AIPAC, ADL, or USISTF. No public evidence identified.

End Notes