COMPANY NEWS & PR
1.Behind group's anti-Monsanto campaign? Dupont
2.Monsanto thinks there's something 'magical' about GM pollination of non-GM crops
3.BASF Sees $2 Billion Value From Monsanto Seed Venture
4.CTC Brazil to work with BASF on GM sugarcane
5.The Gene Hunt: Should Finders Be Keepers?
EXTRACTS: Slumping orders for plastics, coatings and catalysts forced BASF and rivals such as Dow Chemical Co. to cut jobs and curtail production. While group sales and profit at BASF are forecast to decline in 2009 year, the agriculture unit predicts an increase in earnings... (item 3)
"It was an error on the part of the patent office to grant the patents," says Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, Calif., which has voiced their support for the plaintiffs in the case. "Things that are 'products of nature' should be a commons, like the air we breathe." (item 5)
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1.Behind group's anti-Monsanto campaign? Dupont
Jeffrey Tomich
St. Louis Post Dispatch, 8 July 2009
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/1C2AD19A56AB93968625760B0017A62C?OpenDocument
When the Organization for Competitive Markets holds its annual conference in downtown St. Louis today, a certain target of the daylong meeting will be the king of genetically modified seed, Monsanto Co.
OCM, a nonprofit based in Lincoln, Neb., has forged a reputation over the last decade for taking on big agriculture on behalf of small farmers and consumers. It filed congressional testimony and went to court to fight meat company JBS Swift's purchase of National Beef and Smithfield Beef in 2008. It opposed Whole Foods Inc.'s purchase of Wild Oats two years ago.
More recently, the company has started the "Seed Concentration Project" to put heat on Creve Coeur-based Monsanto, claiming the company controls 90 percent of the market for genetically modified seed.
OCM's stance on Monsanto isn't news to the farmers, academics and government officials expected to attend or speak at today's conference on competition in agriculture ”” a list that includes senior representatives from the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
But what many of them probably don't know is that the group is backed by Monsanto's archrival, DuPont, a corporate Goliath in both agriculture and chemicals.
"We've supported OCM for a number of years as we have dozens of organizations that are aligned with our belief around what's in the best interest of our farmer customers," said DuPont spokesman Dan Turner. "However, we don't disclose the amount that we give to OCM or any other organization."
Turner couldn't name any of the other organizations that DuPont supports.
The company's relationship with OCM came to light only after a Washington-based public relations firm purportedly representing OCM mistakenly included a reference to DuPont's agricultural subsidiary, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., at the bottom of an e-mailed news release promoting the St. Louis conference.
In fact, DuPont and OCM are working together on a broader campaign to convince policymakers and regulators in Washington and across the Farm Belt that Monsanto's dominance in transgenic seeds is bad for agriculture. Those efforts also include soliciting state attorneys general to investigate and possibly sue Monsanto for anti-competitive behavior.
This isn't the first time DuPont has been involved with a veiled PR campaign against Monsanto.
In 2007, the company was connected to an effort to derail Monsanto's $1.5 billion acquisition of Delta & Pine Land Co. In at least one case, a bogus opposition letter was sent to the minority leader of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company is disappointed that DuPont has aligned itself with OCM to "spread false and misleading statements."
Monsanto also disputes that it controls 90 percent of the genetically modified seed business and that its leading position in biotech seeds is bad for farmers. To the contrary, its genetic traits, which are also licensed to DuPont and other seed companies, are sought by corn, soybean and cotton growers because they improve yield and help control insects and weeds, Quarles said.
As the two largest U.S. seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont are natural rivals.
But tension escalated this spring when Monsanto filed a federal lawsuit accusing DuPont of patent infringement. The lawsuit says DuPont's plan to combine its own herbicide tolerance trait in a soybean seed along with Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene violates terms of a 2004 license agreement.
DuPont countersued weeks later, claiming the agreement allows it to combine, or "stack," genetic traits. The company accused Monsanto of filing the lawsuit to protect its franchise at the expense of giving farmers access to better technology. Both of the lawsuits are pending in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
Skirmishes between Monsanto and DuPont in and outside of the court illustrate the stakes in a global race to develop and sell new, higher-priced biotech seeds. Globally, the sale of genetically modified seed generates billions of dollars in sales annually, and both companies want a larger share.
For its part, OCM has publicly decried "big agriculture" and consolidation in the agriculture industry. Yet DuPont owns the No. 2 seed company in the U.S. that just last month announced a significant increase in sales volumes.
And while OCM has blasted Monsanto for filing the patent infringement lawsuit, DuPont just two months ago sued Germany's BASF over the same kind of alleged violations.
OCM, founded in 1998, calls itself a public policy research organization that "strives to bring competition back to the agriculture industry and promote fair trade." A banner on top of the group's website features an image of Teddy Roosevelt, the famed "trust buster" known for breaking up corporate monopolies.
As recently as a couple of years ago, the group's website claimed it didn't accept funding from dominant firms in agriculture. That language has since been deleted. Today, OCM says only that its funding comes from "membership dues, foundations, businesses and individuals."
Fred Stokes, OCM's executive director, refused to list its financial supporters. He said the group is willing to accept help from virtually anyone who helps further its cause. But money has never stood in the way of the group's mission.
"We don't deviate one degree from our mission and principles for anybody," Stokes said.
OCM's focus on the seed market, and Monsanto specifically, isn't the reason the group chose to hold its conference in St. Louis, he said.
"We're not out on any kind of smear campaign," Stokes said. "We're just a bunch of redneck do-gooders out here trying to get along and tell a story that needs to be told."
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2.Monsanto thinks there is something 'magical' about GM pollination of non-GM crops.....
North Coast Voices, July 29 2009
http://blogotariat.com/node/176540
There is no doubt about it, Monsanto & Co employees are a scary group when they start to blog.
Earlier this month in a post titled I am Monsanto one of these happy clappy souls decided to pose a rather sarcastic hypothetical question; Did you know that pollen from our genetically-modified crops will magically migrate into another farmer's field and contaminate his crop?
Apparently (if one is a Monsanto employee) the well-known natural processes known as pollen drift and cross fertilisation are not within the bounds of our world - for GM traits to be found in non-GM crops or GM plants to be discovered in non-GM fields then something otherworldly has to have occurred.
This will come as a complete surprise to biologists and agronomists:
Managing "Pollen Drift" to Minimize Contamination of Non-GMO Corn, AGF-153
http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0153.html
Gene flow through pollen drift: a scientific perspective
http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/biotech/presentations/Ransom-Pollen-Drift-in-Wheat.ppt#256,1,Gene
Pollen drift and the bystanding farmer: harmonising patent law and common law on the technological frontier
http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=fac_pm
However Monsanto employees are not finished with spin on the company blog Monsanto according to Monsanto.
In another post called Agent Orange and Monsanto the case is made for a benign and patriotic Monsanto participating in deliberate dioxin contamination on a large scale because; The U.S. government, under the Defense Production Act, directed seven companies including Monsanto, which was then primarily a chemical company to manufacture the material.
Yes, the President made me do it appears to be the argument here.
A government contract defence that U.S. courts have not apparently fully supported, as there was a 1984 case in which in has been reported that Judge Weinstein encouraged settlement and eventually directed Monsanto to pay over a large percentage of an $180 million out of court settlement in favour of American veterans.
However, in a classic look-here-not-there manoeuvre Monsanto directs our attention to the unsuccessful 2004 litigation by Vietnamese veterans in which it was also a co-defendant.
All the while remaining silent on the fact that sales of Agent Orange and Lasso were basically what kept Monsanto's agricultural chemical division in the black during the 1960s and the Viet Nam War.
Now I have been wondering of late why it is that Monsanto employees are so cavalier with how they use available fact and historical record.
I refuse to believe that their obvious youth (in comparison to North Coast Voices authors) is a significant factor because older people do not have a monopoly on commonsense or knowledge.
So I am left with the possibility that Monsanto's corporate culture is so intense that employees are totally indoctrinated by the end of their first year with the firm and thereafter are incapable of recognising that Monsanto & Co hasn't been a uniformly ethical company from its inception up to the more recent past.
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3.BASF Sees $2 Billion Value From Monsanto Seed Venture
By Richard Weiss
Bloomberg, August 4 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=alMaAZmg56w8
BASF SE, the world's biggest chemical company, said genetically modified crops developed jointly with Monsanto Co. could add more than $2 billion to the industry through extra farm yields and higher sales for manufacturers.
Including research separate from the Monsanto venture, BASF has a pipeline for genetically modified plants that could reach $2.5 billion in so-called market value by 2020, the Ludwigshafen, Germany-based company said in a presentation on its Web site yesterday.
Agricultural solutions, the smallest of BASF's six businesses by sales, was the only one that reported an increase in second-quarter operating profit. BASF and Monsanto, the world's biggest seed producer, agreed in 2007 to spend as much as $1.5 billion on joint research on plants that use nutrients better, produce higher yields and are more resistant to drought.
Plant biotechnology, currently a research-only branch of BASF's agricultural solutions business, will eventually become an operating division and new products are expected to come onto the market in 2011 or 2012, spokeswoman Ingrid Nienaber said by telephone.
BASF also plans to spend more than 100 million euros ($144 million) this year expanding capacity in crop protection, which includes herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, even as overall capital expenditure declines. Protection products scheduled to be on the market by 2014, including some introduced as early as 2002, have a peak sales potential of 2.1 billion euros, the German company said in the presentation.
Bigger Share
Slumping orders for plastics, coatings and catalysts forced BASF and rivals such as Dow Chemical Co. to cut jobs and curtail production. While group sales and profit at BASF are forecast to decline in 2009 year, the agriculture unit predicts an increase in earnings and a profit margin target of at least 25 percent, according to Stefan Marcinowski, the BASF board member responsible for Agricultural Solutions.
Crop protection will get a bigger share of BASF's research budget as agriculture withstands an economic slump that has hurt demand for its other products, Marcinowski said in an interview in May.
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4.Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira and BASF enter technical cooperation agreement in sugarcane
BASF, August 5 2009
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/centro_de_tecnologia_canavieira_and_basf_enter_technical_cooperation_agreement_sugarc
*German-based BASF and Brazilian research center enter cooperation in plant biotechnology
*Focus on development of genetically modified sugarcane varieties for the Brazilian market with drought tolerance and 25 percent higher yields
CTC Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira and BASF announced today a cooperation agreement in plant biotechnology. The companies are combining their competencies in sugarcane breeding and biotechnology with the aim of bringing sugarcane growers higher-yielding and drought-tolerant sugarcane varieties. The goal is to bring sugarcane varieties with yield increases of 25 percent to the market within about the next decade. This would result in an almost unprecedented jump in productivity for any crop.
”We entered this cooperation because we are strongly committed to the continuous development in technologies for increasing yield and to reduce production costs in sugarcane,” said Nilson Zaramella Boeta, CEO of CTC. “The great leap in sugarcane quality and productivity that CTC and BASF start working on today will certainly support Brazil’s position as the leading global player in sugar, ethanol and energy,” he added.
“The key objective of this cooperation is to develop sugarcane varieties that will produce 25 percent more yield than the varieties currently on the market. This type of yield increase would mean that the average quantity of sugarcane harvested could rise from 80 to 100 tons per hectare,” said Marc Ehrhardt, Group Vice President, BASF Plant Science. “We are proud to cooperate with CTC, one of the world’s leaders in improving sugarcane production through conventional breeding as well as biotechnology. The cooperation is another example of BASF’s plant biotechnology strategy by which we aim to increase efficiency in farming by bringing BASF’s superior genes to farmers around the world in cooperation with the best partners.”
The yield increase that the partners are targeting will create significant additional value that will be shared among sugarcane, ethanol and energy producers, as well as CTC and BASF. The agreement also provides the possibility for both companies to evaluate the development of sugarcane varieties with herbicide-tolerant characteristics in the future.
With this agreement, BASF is launching its biotechnology activities in the sugarcane sector. CTC the largest and leading sugarcane research center in Brazil with 40 years of history and 15 years dedicated to biotechnology will gain a very important partner in research to develop new technological solutions. BASF provides plant biotech knowhow as well as its most promising genes, and CTC, in turn, brings its broad expertise in sugarcane and adds selected genes to its most promising sugarcane varieties.
Located in the municipality of Piracicaba in São Paulo, CTC has 40 years of activities and is a worldwide technological reference in sugarcane breeding. The center has 182 members producing sugar, ethanol and energy. CTC serves about 12,000 sugarcane growers and maintains experimental stations and regional units in strategic areas of the Southeast, South and the Midwest in Brazil. The main objective of the center is to develop and transfer cutting-edge technology to its members. These together account for 60% of cane processed in Brazil, or a total of 450 million tons during the 2008-09 season.
With the largest germplasm sugarcane bank in the world, CTC carries out research in the industrial, logistics and agronomic areas: varieties of sugar cane, planting and mechanized harvest, biotechnology, biological pests control, healthy plants, geoprocessing, satellite images, location of production environment, sugar production, energy generation and production of ethanol from 1st and 2nd Generation. In biotechnology, CTC conducts state-of-the-art research, using a 5,000 m2 greenhouse, authorized by CTNBio and employing highly qualified, including master and PhD level, professionals. For more information: www.ctc.com.br.
BASF is the world’s leading chemical company: The Chemical Company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products, agricultural products and fine chemicals to crude oil and natural gas. As a reliable partner, BASF helps its customers in virtually all industries to be more successful. BASF’s high-value products and intelligent system solutions helps them to find answers to global challenges such as climate protection, energy efficiency, nutrition and mobility. BASF posted sales of €62 billion in 2008 and had approximately 97,000 employees at year-end. BASF shares are traded on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt (BAS), London (BFA) and Zurich (AN).
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5.The Gene Hunt: Should Finders Be Keepers?
Lynne Peeples
Scientific American, July 31 2009
http://www.geneticsandsociety.rsvp1.com/article.php?id=4782&mgh=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geneticsandsociety.org&mgf=1
Defendants in a high-profile lawsuit that could have significant implications for thousands of patents on human genes have now asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, calling it a "thinly veiled attempt to challenge the validity of patents."
Two months ago, more than 150,000 researchers, doctors, activists and cancer patients filed a federal lawsuit in New York City against Myriad Genetics, Inc., the University of Utah Research Foundation and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Under the organization of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), they are challenging the legality and constitutionality of gene patents, with a focus on two of the most controversial: BRCA1 and BRCA2. Both genes are associated with breast and ovarian cancers, and both are held by Myriad. The information encoded in our DNA should belong to everyone, the plaintiffs argue, and the current standards for obtaining a patent are too low.
"There's a sense that the privatization of certain things has gone too far," says Debra Greenfield, an attorney and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is not associated with the lawsuit. "Abstract things are being patented now, whether it's something in your body or a business method."
But in their motion to dismiss filed last week, Myriad and the University of Utah argue otherwise. "The patent system has worked exactly as it was designed to do," the defendants wrote, explaining that they "spent considerable time, effort and money, in competition with other researchers" to win the patents.
The history of gene patents
Almost 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Diamond v. Chakrabarty that a genetically modified bacterium was a patentable subject matter. The Court called the scientist's discovery of the bacteria with improved capacity for degrading crude oil, "not nature's handiwork, but his own." This opened the door for companies to pluck out a segment of DNA and put their name on it.
The USPTO has since granted thousands of patents for biological entities, always with the caveat that they must be first isolated, purified or modified in some way. Today, one out of every five human genes is privately owned. Those opposed to gene patents complain that no one without the permission of the patent holder is allowed to freely work with, or even think about using, this 20 percent.
Myriad is just one of many companies in possession of these genes, but is one of only a few that has not licensed the information to others to conduct research or create their own test. Since the mid-90s, the company has owned the exclusive rights to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Whereas only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer patients have a mutation at one of these genes, those having it face a 40 to 85 percent chance they will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives.
Given these odds, a screening test for the mutations can provide useful information for women who are considering proactive interventions to prevent future cancer. "If you want the test done, you have to go through Myriad," says Josephine Johnston, director of research operations at The Hastings Center, a nonpartisan bioethics and public policy research institute. "And they hold those patents pretty close to their chests." The test currently costs around $3,000, although most insurance companies do cover it. "People think it's a pretty steep price," Johnston adds. "But when you have this kind of control, you can set the price. They could've made it $30,000 if they wanted to."
In another five years, the exclusive rights that the USPTO granted Myriad based on the isolation and purification of the two genes will expire. But according to many who oppose gene patents, that's five years too many-too many more women will be without a second opinion or an opportunity to purchase a cheaper test to help decide whether or not to undergo a radical surgical procedure.
Details of the patent argument
Geoffrey Karny, a patent lawyer in Virginia, doesn't buy the argument that gene patents hurt patients. "What they're trying to do is advance patient care," he says, suggesting the price tag is key to improving diagnostic tools. After his recent trip to Hong Kong and China, the connection between "cheaper" gene tests and pirated products, like DVDs, became obvious to Karny. "Myriad has done the heavy lifting. Of course, someone could piggyback on that and sell it for $100," he says. "But stuff doesn't just jump from lab to marketplace." Companies, he suggests, require patent protection to invest the "years of effort and millions of dollars needed to develop a product to be used in a clinic."
In China Karny also witnessed a growing biotechnology industry that could threaten the U.S. economy. "We need that tech here," he says, noting a special concern for small start-ups. "Why should investors put money into companies if they'll never get a return on that investment?"
The lawsuit has brought to the forefront broader ethical questions that had already been stirring: Where do you draw the line between what is considered a product of nature and what is a product of man? Where does discovery end and invention begin? In its complaint, the ACLU states, "An 'isolated and purified' human gene performs the exact same function as a nonisolated and purified human gene in a person's body."
The Hasting Center's Johnston suggests that Myriad and other owners of gene patents haven't really changed the gene-that it is still essentially a product of nature: "I'm sympathetic to people who say that it's like taking gold out of the ground," Johnston says. "You haven't created anything new."
Others take this argument one step further. "It was an error on the part of the patent office to grant the patents," says Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, Calif., which has voiced their support for the plaintiffs in the case. "Things that are 'products of nature' should be a commons, like the air we breathe."
What about research on patented genes?
The ACLU's complaint also rests on the belief that Myriad's monopoly is stifling research. "If everybody had that gene, who knows what different kinds of diagnostics, what different kinds of treatments might emerge," says U.C.L.A.'s Greenfield. "Those could be patentable, but when you patent and monopolize the underlying basic research tool, maybe one company has a lot of incentive, but everybody else doesn't." She adds that there is actually little incentive for the patent holder to improve the quality of the tests or lower its price.
Myriad Genetics refused to speak about the case, as did the USPTO, both noting their policies against commenting on pending litigation measures. But in the 2008 PBS documentary, In the Family, Myriad founder Mark Skolnick responded to producer Joanna Rudnick's patent questioning very simply: "There's no controversy."
Karny would agree, actually calling the lawsuit "garbage." He adds, "If courts were to buy the argument, it would be devastating for the biotech industry and for our health in general." Karny compares the issue with a classic Mark Twain analogy. "Myriad has produced a flash of lightning and ACLU has given us a lightning bug," he says. "The court should squash the lightning bug."
Myriad's motion for dismissal will be heard on August 26 in New York's Southern District Court.