This is an extract from an item commissioned and first published by Feed Compounder magazine (July 2011 issue) on its Screenings page. While aimed primarily at readers in the animal feed industry, I hope the content is also relevant to farming and other areas of UK agri-business. However, if you think it's bo!!o**$ please let me know.
The largest milk co-operative in France, Sodiaal-Candia, is probably best known here for its Yoplait brand, though it has many others and operates in most dairy product sectors. It has 13,000 milk producer and processor shareholders, handles 5 billion litres of milk annually, and generates €4 billion a year turnover (interestingly, if a bit crude, €0.8/litre). In April this year, the company signed an R&D contract with a biotechnology company to explore milk’s beneficial effects, both nutritional and therapeutic, on human health at the biochemical and physiological levels. The R&D partner, Rhenovia Pharma SAS, specialises in the central and peripheral nervous system. Applying their knowledge and processes to nutrition will help Sodiaal “better understand the effects of food on human health, and especially on people’s predisposition to neurodegenerative diseases.”
In particular, Rhenovia has developed a computer model of cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in a number of neurological diseases including epilepsy, neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. It pursues alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies interested in, for example, identifying new targets for therapeutic molecules.
The press release announcing the R&D contract says confidently, “Results of these studies will improve our understanding of the relationships between food, health and predisposition to degenerative diseases.” Rhenovia Pharma chairman Dr Serge Bischoff says, “It makes complete sense for Rhenovia to invest in the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, and to continue to find solutions for the nutritional deficiencies that are often associated with them.”
Having been first to market with innovations that include vitamin-supplemented, micro-nutrient-enhanced, flavoured, and neonatal milks, Sodiaal-Candia claims to be a leading player in countering “the trivial status of milk over the last 40 years,” says the press release. Their Candia Just Milk brand of long-life skimmed, semi and whole milk is on sale here in Sainsbury’s, Makro and Costco outlets currently.
The intriguing point for UKdairy farmers and the milk processors they serve is whether this French rival will gain competitive advantage from its R&D investment or find itself pouring milk down the drain. Clearly, they’ll be investing shareholders’ money in search of patent-protected proprietary gains that they can brand and earn value from—Milk for Healthy Brains, perhaps—rather than milk’s generic good image. Are the UK’s milk producers and processors active in this arena, I wonder?
Answers on a postcard please.
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