In Normandy, France, a company makes a nutritional supplement called Plumpynut that offers the best hope for the world’s starving children.

Invented in 1999 by French pediatric nutritional scientist Andre Briend, who is affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO), and manufactured under the flagship French company Nutriset, which was formed in 1986 to address the nutritional problems of populations at risk, the product is manufactured under license from the company in several African countries where, in the past five years, it has transformed the treatment of malnourished children.

According to Doctors Without Borders’ chief nutritionist, Dr. Milton Tectonidis, the product is remarkable in that it delivers a mega-burst of essential nutrients like protein, calcium, vitamins and minerals from a sterile, single-serving packet that doesn’t require any refrigeration, cooking, or clean water.

The nutrition provided is so complete that, without hospitalization (or in fact any intervention except delivery of the pouches), starving children can be brought back from the brink in 21 days.

Inspired by Nutella, which was invented in the 1940s by Italian firm Ferrero as a nutritional spread that substituted hazelnuts for chocolate made scarce by the war, Plumpynut is made of peanut butter paste, vegetable oil, powdered milk, powdered sugar for energy, and supplemented with vitamins and minerals, the substance is, in the worlds of one Doctors Without Borders worker, “transformational”.

Because it contains a range of vitamins – A, B-complex , C, D, E, and K – and minerals calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, iodine, sodium, and selenium, in 92-gram packets that deliver 500 kilocalories of highly specialized nutrition, Plumpynut works where local food and even family food fails. This is because, past a specific stage of malnutrition, children are unable to digest “regular” food and need intense nutrition.

At about $1 per day, or 12 Euros a month, for a regimen of two packs per day for from two to four weeks, the nutrition is also affordable, even in very poor nations like Niger, where Plumpynut went through field trials during the food crisis in 2005. Equally as important, children – even those weakened by malnutrition – can feed themselves simply by squeezing the envelope. Plumpynut also comes in small tubs, like margarine.

In fact, according to Dr. Tectonidis, if the United States and the European Union were willing to spend part of their food-aid dollar on Plumpynut, more companies would start making it.

And there’s the rub, because Nutriset controls the U.S. patent 6346284 , and aside from its packaging licenses given to businesses in Malawi, Ethiopia, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), Mozambique, and the Dominican Republic, the product can’t be replicated, or even imitated, even by manufacturers who suggest they could produce the same substance at lower cost.

According to Nutriset officials, the patent is needed to insure that greedy manufacturers don’t flood the market with inferior product that could actually make the malnutrition problem in the third world worse (by, for example, substituting items like melamine, as the Chinese did).

Two U.S. nonprofits disagree, and in January said they would sue to challenge the patent, which Director Mike Mellace of the California-based Mama Cares Foundation describes as “so broad and generic that the patent has already been violated by a whole range of foodstuffs”.

The other nonprofit is Lubbock, Texas-based Breedlove Foods , whose CEO, David Fish, is working with Mama Cares and Dallas-based patent attorney Bob Chiaviello. Chiaviello’s firm, Fulbright & Jaworski, is working pro bono to overturn the patent and provide a landscape in which firms like Mama Cares and Breedlove can act to provide cheaper nutrition supplements, which both nonprofits charge Nutriset with preventing.

In fact, Nutriset, under its patent, now provides about 90 percent of the global supply of therapeutic foods. This, according to Mellace, outlines the monopoly that prevents his product, Re:vive (and similar supplements, also called RUTFs, or Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods) from competing.

To support his claim, Mellace notes that only about two million children worldwide are receiving Plumpynuts, even though fully 150 million suffer from some degree of malnutrition.

For Nutriset, the picture is very different. If the patent is overturned, officials say, Nutriset licensees, or partners, in Africa will not be able to compete in a global marketplace with better funded and better equipped American and European manufacturers. And that, in turn, would defeat the “nutritional autonomy” or food security provided by having the product made where it is most often used.

The problem with U.S. production, says Nutriset, is that funding for humanitarian food and nutritional supplement suppliers requires that almost all the aid money be spent on American-grown surplus crops. This means that third world peanut farmers would get short shrift in a global marketplace, further increasing poverty in those countries at highest risk of childhood malnutrition.

But the argument loses its potency when one considers the fact that the French company has just extended its franchising to a Rhode Island firm called Edesia, which will become the United States’ first RUTF production facility.

Mellace and Fish aren’t the French company’s only opponents. In November of 2009, Norwegian RUTF manufacturer Compact confronted Nutriset for blocking shipment of its product to Kenya, from whence Compact intended to ship to Somalia and the DR Congo. In the same year, the Indian government blocked aid agencies using Plumpynut to treat regional pockets of malnutrition. India’s claim? Plumpynut prevented the use of locally grown food.

The question remains; is Nutriset’s defense of its patent purely altruistic, aimed at providing nutritional sovereignty and preventing shoddy nutritional supplements, or is the consistent attack on companies in the same venue an effort to preserve its market base in a constantly changing and increasingly hungry world?

Article by Jeanne Roberts appearing courtesy Celsias.

photo: IRIN Photos

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Following the lead of PepsiCo, Tesco, and Quaker Oats, food purchased in UK supermarkets will soon be labeled to show its carbon footprint , including country of origin, how much carbon was produced in its manufacturing and transportation, and compliance with animal welfare standards.

The Carbon Trust, an independent company established by the British government in response to the impact of climate change, is working with businesses as well as the private sector to help reduce carbon emissions and develop low-carbon technologies.  The Carbon Trust is working with the UK food industry to help manufacturers determine and label the carbon footprint of various items.

In 2007, Walkers Crisps, a PepsiCo product, became the first consumer brand in the world to carry Carbon Trust’s Carbon Reduction Label in the UK.  Quaker Oats and Quaker Simple, also part of PepsiCo, based in Purchase, New York, also carry the Carbon Trust Reduction Label.

The government has also asked all retailers to join the Pigmeat Labeling Code of Practice , due to be published in February, that will show where animals were born, reared and processed.

According to research from the Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University, a survey of more than 400 supermarket shoppers suggests that almost three-quarters of UK consumers agree with government plans for the voluntary carbon footprint labels.  But according to an article in the UK-based Telegraph , some environmental groups believe the government should pass legislation on the labeling scheme rather than making it voluntary.  Critics also feel that carbon labeling will do little to combat climate change unless more low-carbon products are available.

Working with the Carbon Trust, PepsiCo calculated the carbon footprint of a package of Walker Crisps starting with the energy consumption involved in the growth of potatoes and sunflower seeds, and including the manufacturing process, distribution, and disposal of the empty packages.  According to PepsiCo, Walkers reduced its overall carbon footprint by seven percent between 2007 and 2009 by improving energy efficiency and lowering carbon emissions.

In the US, PepsiCo also worked with the Carbon Trust to calculate the carbon footprint of a standard 64-ounce carton of its Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice .  Tropicana found that agricultural and manufacturing-related processes account for about 60 percent of the orange juice’s carbon footprint.  PepsiCo is working to reduce Tropicana’s overall environmental impact.  There are no plans to introduce carbon footprint labeling on any US food products at present.

Both Japan and Australia plan to start voluntary carbon footprint labeling on some food packaging and products later this year.  The Carbon Trust is also working UK brands Boots and Innocent to help determine and develop the carbon footprint for different items.

Article by Julie Mitchell, appearing courtesy of Celsias

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Climate change not only presents difficult challenges for the energy industry, but also raises serious concerns about food security as loss of topsoil and desertification reduce arable land around the world.  Within this climate, genetically-modified crops (GMOs) will play a crucial role in supporting increased development and population growth.

GMOs are organisms, such as plants and animals, whose genetic characteristics are being modified artificially in order to give them a new property.  Last month, Monsanto, the world’s leading seed producer, announced that it expects African countries to increase plantings of GMOs in order to boost food security and economic development in the face of climate change.  Africa is the only continent where per-capita food output is falling, which also raises concerns about introducing fuel-dedicated crops.  GMOs could increase yields for both food and fuel, but international and regional rules governing GMOs represent a significant barrier to increased international trade.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is one of the first international agreements to regulate the transboundary transfer of GMOs.  The Cartagena Protocol relies primarily on the precautionary principle, which reflects the recognition that scientific certainty often comes too late to design effective legal and policy responses for preventing many potential environmental threats.  Questions about the downstream health risks associated with genetically-modified food have invoked this principle and led to a zero-tolerance policy in the EU.

The EU continues to regulate GMOs despite a 2006 ruling by the WTO, which held that the EU ban violates international free trade.  The EU’s stance has limited trade between the US, Canada, and Argentina, which together grow 80 percent of the biotech crops sold commercially (EU’s ban contributed to Mansanto’s decision to remove their seed cereal business in Europe).

Given biomass crops’ heavy dependence on fossil fuel and water inputs, genetic modification will play an important role in shoring up the biomass industry’s future competitiveness.  However, with the US and EU still sharply divided on the issue, the biomass industry must dissociate from the GMO/food nexus debate and reassure the public that genetically-modified biomass fuel crops will not endanger public health.  At the same time, the industry would benefit from increased penetration of GMOs used for food, which would increase the agricultural yield of existing arable lands making way for more dedicated energy crops.

This post originally appeared in Biomass Intel

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