Novartis raises food market ambitions
Date: 16-Sep-99
Country: SWITZWERLAND
Novartis officials said it was well positioned to tap the genetic
engineering skills shared by its crop protection and seeds businesses to
develop new products that will help Novartis prosper in what will likely
remain a difficult market.
Some day, officials told a news conference, Novartis may be able to
produce vegetables that fight disease, improve the intellect or slow the
ageing process - provided consumers accept such foods.
This is not inevitable given the problem Novartis's genetically modified
Bt corn and other companies' products have had winning regulatory
approval and a share of consumers' stomachs.
NOVARTIS CONFIDENT GENETIC FOODS WILL SUCCEED
But officials said they were confident they would eventually get their
message across that genetically engineered foods were no more dangerous
and actually healthier in many cases than traditonal foods.
"The technology is so promising that that we think over time it will be
accepted," said Heinz Imhof, head of the Novartis agribusiness and seeds
units.
The idea, Imhof said, is to create value along the length of the food
chain from farmer to final consumer rather than focus on selling seeds
and chemicals to farmers, where Novartis has traditonally devoted.
Seeds research head Wallace Beversdorf explained that vegetables, for
instance, already have a healthy image among consumers.
"In the next stage we would like to improve specific nutritional
characteristics of vegetables to improve their ability to maintain
health," he said.
AIM TO PRODUCE FOODS WHICH FIGHT DISEASE
"After that we would like to go one step further and add real
health-maintenance characteristics, anti-carcinogens, which are
available in some vegetables, anti-oxidants for health nutrition, even
some components that we are starting to know are improving cognitive
reasoning," he said.
The last stage is to develop hard clinical claims for ingredients that
could help manage common diseases like diabetes or Alzheimer's disease,
he added, although this remained some years away.
John Atkin, head of the Novartis crop protection division, said the new
focus would be on crops rather than individual products.
Novartis's agribusiness has been struggling amid a global downturn
fuelled by the trend towards larger farms, lower price supports and
fewer unmet food needs for farmers to fill.
First-half sales fell 10 percent to 4.78 billion Swiss francs ($3.07
billion), while operating profit fell 41 percent to 867 million,
prompting it to announce in June it would cut 1,100 agribusiness jobs
over two years, a target Imhof said would probably be surpassed.