Peanut Butter and Patents

“RUTF blogger” claims three different companies make peanut-paste products in Malawi and only one of them is franchised by Nutriset. I hope to check this information out when I visit Malawi next year. This information was first posted on my other blog, The Global Health Report. (RUTF is short for ready-to-use-therapeutic food.).

If RUTF blogger is right, this could be another example of prior art.

From RUTF blogger (sorry, no link available):

In Malawi, there are two producers of RUTF essentially using the same formula. One producer has machinery specified by Nuttriset and they are either a franchisee or a licensee. (The terminology is important, but I don’t know what strings are attached to their agreement.) The other producer has developed its own processing equipment, produces the same quality product, and is providing about the same volume of product to Malawi. However, they say they are neither a licensee nor a franchisee, but that they ARE allowed to produce RUTF without any opposition from (or perhaps even with agreement of) Nutriset. They are not using the Plumpy’Nut(R) brand name. A third company is a commercial food processor and has been producing nutritional supplements for years. They have a product sold widely in grocery stores that is very similar (has soy milk instead of dairy milk solids and is lactose free). It has about the same energy value (KCal/100g); same or similar level of vitamin and mineral supplements; same or similar protein, carb, and fat content; also predominantly peanut and sugar-based; also ready-to-eat and no water added… but they definitely have no license from Nutriset. In fact, I’ve been told their product actually pre-dates Plumpy’Nut(R)- I have not been able to validate this. Their product is promoted as a supplement and not as a total food replacing other food. It is not promoted for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) but is positioned as “The most efficient energy and weight accelerator!” See more at their site: http://www.sibusiso.net/. They seem to now be owned by a major Malawi food processer called Rab Processors Ltd. See http://rabmw.com

A nutrition researcher I haven’t seen for over a year tells me about research on peanut-based nutritional supplements in the late 1970s and early 1980s that may (or may not) constitute prior art. While attending my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in Dallas last weekend, I learn that one of my cousins in France used to work for Nutriset for a year.

The research paper is “Dietary Supplementation of Gambian Nursing Mothers and Lactational Performance” and was published in the Lancet, Oct. 25, 1980, vol. 2, pages 886 to 888. (Will post link to an abtract in Medline soon. Here’s the abstract with a brief description of the peanuts-and-dried-milk-based supplement from Medline.)

The Lancet paper contains a reference to a “supplement that consists of locally prepared groundnut-based biscuits also containing wheat-soy flour, dried skimmed milk, groundnut oil, and sugar, together with a tea drink fortified with 0.6 ml ‘Abidec’ multi-vitamin supplement (Parke-Davis Co. Ltd) per daily portion.”

There are a number of similarities here with Plumpy’nut and some important differences. Similarities include: use of groundnuts (presumably peanuts), dried milk, oil, multi-vitamins. Differences include: use of tea (requiring clean water). Questions to investigate: Is the 1980 Lancet work prior art? Is it significant?

As for my cousin having once worked for Nutriset (my Mom’s family is from Normandy, near where Nutriset is located), that’s quite a coincidence but it doesn’t seem like a conflict to me. In any event, I’m publishing it so that you can reach your own conclusions.

Harvard professor Michael Sandel wonders if the neem story might have some bearing on patenting peanut-based foods for malnourished children. I asked Sandel about Nutriset after a talk he gave this evening at the Nieman Foundation.

At the turn of the 21st century, the European patent office revoked a patent it had granted on a fungicide derived from the neem tree, the source of many traditional agricultural products in India. In essence, the European patent office recognized that farmers had been using the seeds, oils and other parts of the neem tree for years to fight pests, blight and other agricultural problems. So the patent holders–in this case the US Department of Agriculture and W.R. Grace–were not entitled to the patent because they had not in fact created something novel.

Which brings up a few questions: Is there any previous history of using peanut butter mixes to fight starvation or treat malnourishment? If so, would that constitute what patent lawyers call “prior art”? And how many children would die of malnourishment before the challenge could finally be adjudicated? Related to that, how much money would have to be spent on the challenge and wouldn’t that money just be better spent buying the (patented) stuff and giving it to the kids?