Legal fight over Plumpy'nut, the hunger wonder-product

Should a revolutionary humanitarian food product be protected by commercial patent, when lifting restrictions might save millions of starving children?

That is the moral conundrum at the heart of a bitter transatlantic legal dispute.

On one side are the French inventors of Plumpy'nut, a peanut paste which in the last five years has transformed treatment of acute malnutrition in Africa.

Nutriset, the Normandy-based company, says the patent is needed to safeguard production of Plumpy'nut in the developing world, and to stop the market being swamped by cheap US surpluses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8610427.stm

they do not have that allergy in Africa. They don't really have any allergies there. :shrug: Found that out when Anderson Cooper featured the product in a report.

:rofl:

Made with real asbestos! Provides 100% RDA of lead, cadmium, and mercury!

It's great that Nutriset developed this peanut formula. But they can't deliver the needed volume, or deliver at a cost that will allow NGOs to save all the lives that they might save if larger producers made the formula too. Nutriset must be thanked for developing the formula. American agriconglomerates and frankenfood producers aren't "good guys" for wanting to flood belatedly into a new market that they could have easily filled for decades if they had given half a moment's thought to starvation in Africa. But should millions of children die to preserve the sanctity of international patents? No fucking way.

Effectively force the licensing.

Also not sure if a very close clone could not be developed and the formula placed in the public domain.

but the kids who die because they don't get the formula because the price with the Nutriset royalty built-in will be too high for the aid organizations to afford all they need will still be dead, just as if Nutriset had remained the lone producer. When you say "force Nutriset to license and pay Nutriset a royalty" you are saying a certain number of kids will starve to death to protect the sanctity of patents. That's unacceptable. Set aside the lofty legalese of "patent law" and look closely at the material in dispute here. We're talking about a fucking kitchen recipe of peanut butter, powdered milk, ground up vitamins, and preservatives.

Although I feel tugged by the conflicting claims, for example experiencing a feeling of gratitude to Nutriset for initially developing a formula which larger producers could have developed long ago, and feeling hope that larger producers will provide more of it more cheaply -while being simultaneously aware their own motives haven't suddenly become noble now that they want to produce peanut formula- I absolutely refuse to become morally invested in a dispute between what is, in the last analysis, nothing more than two companies out to make a buck off of famine. Nutriset isn't doing this for anyone's "thanks" now, whatever the impulse was that first led them to develop the formula. The American agribusiness conglomerates aren't doing anything in this case out of the goodness of their hearts, either. I kick their competing claims against each other and any feelings I have about them into the trash. The only claim that matters is the human need for the widest possible availability/lowest cost of peanut formula, in order to alleviate as much suffering and death as possible.

In a similar way, I applaud the Africa based pharmaceutical companies which for years "pirated" the formula for patented drugs used in HIV/AIDS treatment. They "license" the patents now, at zero royalties cost. But they only have that zero-royalties deal because they were initially willing to tell the Western pharmaceuticals to go to hell with their patents. The "licensing" arrangement is merely a face saving measure for western corporations, so they can maintain the illusion that the whole world shares their obscene values which put the sanctity of patents over human life.

Higher volume manufacture could offset any royalty costs. Also royalties are effectively free money for Nutriset which could set them at a token amount for product destined for food relief, not unlike the the drug companies you cite.