[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[SANET-MG] boycott pharm rice



Busch to boycott state's rice if genetic alterations allowed
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star, Apr. 12, 2005
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/11369865.htm

Commodity-buying behemoth Anheuser-Busch Cos. has
vowed to boycott Missouri's 30 million-bushel rice crop if genetically
altered, drug-making plants are grown in the state.

The beer maker, the country's single largest rice buyer, last week told
Missouri growers it would not buy their rice if a firm that recently
moved from California wins permission to plant about 150 acres of
pharmaceutical grain in the rice-rich Bootheel region.

"Anheuser-Busch holds the trump card. If they say they're not going to
buy any rice if this (pharmaceutical) rice is planted, then don't
plant," said Dan Jennings, a grower from Sikeston, Mo., who had
previously supported the experimental crop.

An Anheuser-Busch boycott "puts pressure on everybody else who buys
Missouri rice to defend it."

The brewer has long opposed Ventria Bioscience's plans.

Ventria wants to grow rice genetically engineered to produce lactoferrin
and lysozyme - substances found in human tears, saliva and mother's milk
and used for digestive problems. Currently they can be extracted from
mother's milk for up to $30,000 a
gram or drawn from chicken eggs with the chance of triggering allergic
reactions. The rice is not yet approved for huma nconsumption.

Anheuser-Busch contends too many ways exist - from human error to
flooding to the movement of animals - for the pharmaceutical rice to
invade commercial varieties.

"Given the potential for contamination of commercial rice production in
this state, we will not purchase any rice produced or processed in
Missouri if Ventria introduces its pharma rice here," said Jim
Hoffmeister, Busch's group vice president  for procurement, logistics
and agricultural resources.

"It freezes the rice grower in Missouri out of selling to this huge
customer," said Paul Combs, a grower and implement dealer near Kennett.
"We think it's indicative of the pattern other companies will take."

The beer company is joined in opposing Ventria's plans by the USA Rice
Federation, the U.S. Rice Producers Association and Riceland Foods Inc.,
a farmer-owned cooperative and the world's largest rice miller and
marketer. Anheuser-Busch, however, is alone in its boycott.

The U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has said Ventria's
plan "should not have a significant impact, either individually or
cumulatively, on the quality of the human environment" but has not
weighed in on the economic impact.

The firm still must get federal approval for its plans. States are
consulted during such permit processes, and Missouri has been solidly
behind Ventria. A spokeswoman for Gov. Matt Blunt said Monday that he
supports Ventria's plans despite
Anheuser-Busch's position, saying the "science is sound."

Last year the company decided to move its headquarters from Sacramento,
Calif., to Maryville, Mo., to form a partnership with Northwest Missouri
State University, which offered free office space and a promise of
investment in plant research. The
university's president, Dean Hubbard, has since joined Ventria's board
of directors without compensation.

Hubbard speculated that opposition from Riceland Foods comes from
worries that the cooperative won't be able to pay farmers as much as
Ventria promises. He said Anheuser-Busch's worries about contamination
are unfounded. The university president said any risks - he
characterized them as minimal as "anything when you're dealing with
nature" - should be weighed against how the cheap production of drugs
promised by pharmaceutical rice could save children in developing countries.

"What this boils down to is beer or babies," Hubbard said.

The company now has a proposal pending with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture to grow its rice in the southeast Missouri counties of Cape
Girardeau, Scott and Mississippi - within 5 miles of some commercial
paddies.

The company chose self-pollinating crops such as rice and barley to
prevent wind from carrying the pollen to other crops.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently studied the breeding of drugs
into corn and soybeans - soybeans are self-pollinating, corn is not -
and concluded that contamination is virtually inevitable.

Missouri's rice crop in 2004, nearly all of it grown on 200,000 acres in
the rich and soggy soil of the Bootheel, was worth about $95 million to
farmers. Those fields sit next to 1.6 million acres of rice in Arkansas
- or about half the nation's crop.

To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or
send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com

********************************************************
To unsubscribe from SANET-MG:
1- Visit http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html to unsubscribe or;
2- Send a message to <listserv@sare.org> from the address subscribed to the list. Type "unsubscribe sanet-mg" in the body of the message.

Visit the SANET-MG archives at: http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html
For more information on grants and other resources available through the SARE program, please visit http://www.sare.org.