Will a Patent on This Wonder-Food Save Lives?

When it comes to Plumpy'nut, opinions diverge on whether it's a complex wonder-food or basically just a glorified kind of Nutella. But there's no arguing over its curative properties: the peanut-laden concoction has saved thousands of lives suffering from malnutrition around the world.

So why has the seemingly innocuous foodstuff become — as the BBC puts it — the centerpiece of a "bitter transatlantic legal dispute"?

Globally, there are some 26 million children who face malnutrition every day. Plumpy'nut, a blend of peanut butter, powdered milk, sugar, vegetable oil and vitamins, is a paste that's proven to stave off such hunger, as was well demonstrated during Niger's 2005 food crisis. No problems here.

But the picture gets more complicated once you consider who's battling to manufacture it. On the one hand, you've got Plumpy'nut's French inventors, Nutriset, who at the moment hold a patent on the product. On the other side, you've got two American NGOs who are filing suit to overturn their claim on Plumpy'nut in Washington D.C. federal court, saying that the peanut paste's original manufacturers are stifling access to the life-saving product.

We've seen this narrative before: miracle food/drug gets blocked by greedy insert-company-here. Right?

In this case, though, the picture gets more clouded when you consider that the patent isn't universal, and Nutriset has actually set up a network of partnerships in a dozen countries like Malawi and Kenya to locally manufacture and distribute Plumpy'nut.

The problem, according to Nutriset, is the stringent U.S. requirements that mandate 99% of aid money be spent on American goods. The fear is that if U.S. manufacturers were able to jump into the Plumpy'nut game, they would easily swamp African producers.

That's a well-justified concern, one we've previously blogged about here. It's also one that in Nutriset's case seems undercut by the fact that the company has recently opened up a joint venture in Rhode Island, where it will be able to reap the benefits of U.S. aid preferences (so far, it's gotten $2 million in backing from USAID). Somehow, when it comes to Nutriset's own production, fear about gobbling up African producers doesn't appear quite as salient.

All that aside, though, one of the major issues at hand here isn't just the squabble over who gets to churn out Plumpy'nut — or even the above-mentioned, wildly inefficient U.S. trade preferences. As we've previously touched on here, a bigger question might be the lack of infrastructure and funding to support delivery of such so-called wonder products in the first place.

Photo Credit: master maq