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Capital biotech firm gets
static from several sides
May 31
Sacramento Bee
A handful of anti-biotech activists
descended on Ventria Bioscience last
week with an "eviction notice"
and a moving van, bluntly inviting the
Sacramento company that grows pharmaceuticals
in rice to leave the state.
Ventria's proposal to grow its novel
product is scheduled for review again
Tuesday morning by a rice industry panel
in Yuba City.
But the street theater signaled that
the company's plans to ramp up production
are catalyzing concerns about manufacturing
drugs in food crops.
"This has provided a really graphic
wake-up call," said Renata Brillinger,
campaign coordinator at Californians
for GE-Free Agriculture in Occidental.
"It's such a sci-fi thing."
Not just the activists are concerned.
In Japan, the influential Rice Retailers'
Association said it would seek a ban
on California rice imports if genetically
modified, or GM, rice is grown commercially
in the United States.
"We think it is practically impossible
to guarantee no GM contamination in
non-GM (rice)," the industry group
said in a statement handed out by the
Japanese Consulate in San Francisco.
Californians also have taken notice.
Many Sacramento Valley rice farmers
are wary, even though Ventria promised
to grow its rice only in counties where
no commercial food rice is grown.
San Luis Obispo was one of 10 counties
Ventria could target for its "pharma"
crop, which has been engineered to produce
two common human proteins, lactoferrin
and lysozyme. The company envisions
using them in anti-diarrheal treatments.
After reading newspaper reports about
the possibility of the novel crop in
San Luis Obispo, an unsettled county
Board of Supervisors ordered a review
of what it could mean.
Supervisor Peg Pinard was annoyed that
the county had no say in a plan that
affects its top industry, farming. "We
should certainly have major involvement
in what goes on here," Pinard said.
"I want to ... only proceed with
caution."
At the state level, Byron Sher, chairman
of the Senate Environmental Quality
Committee, is requesting an environmental
review before the California Department
of Food and Agriculture decides whether
Ventria can ramp up production beyond
its current test plots.
"I am ... concerned that action
on this is being contemplated before
the potential environmental impacts
have been adequately considered,"
the Palo Alto Democrat said in a letter
to the agriculture agency.
Sher has yet to get a response, but
a CDFA spokesman said the agency would
follow applicable environmental laws
when it takes up the Ventria plan.
That could be soon, if Tuesday's meeting
of the 12-member rice industry panel
goes smoothly.
The panel, set up by state legislation
to keep rice varieties separate, in
March approved a strict set of procedures
that would allow Ventria to become the
nation's first commercial-scale producer
of plant-made pharmaceuticals. The goal
was to ensure the company's rice doesn't
mix with food rice.
Next, the plan went to the CDFA, which
was inundated with more than 1,400 letters
- many of them form letters, and virtually
all of them wary about growing drug
compounds in open fields.
A few, however, echoed Ventria's hopes
that "biopharming" offers
cheaper drugs. "To halt or discourage
the important research being conducted
in the state of California would be
a grave mistake," said the Society
for Women's Health Research in Washington,
D.C.
CDFA didn't sign off on the company's
plan, saying the public needs more time
to weigh in. It also told the rice panel
to figure out how to track Ventria's
federal permits, the subject of Tuesday's
meeting.
When that's done, the plan goes back
to the state for review, including a
public comment period expected later
this year.
Ventria officials, reportedly considering
moving their growing program out of
state, are keeping a tight lid on their
plans. "We are still looking at
our options," said company spokeswoman
Brandy Rabe.
The organic activists who dropped in
on Ventria last week say they will hound
the company wherever it goes.
"We don't want you here ... or
anywhere on the planet," said Ryan
Zinn, trade director at Organic Consumers
Association in San Francisco.
