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C
Kameswara Rao
Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness
and Education
The theme of the recent conference of the
Biotechnology Industry Organization (
The BIO annual International Conventions are the largest global
event for the biotechnology industry ‘to provide insights and inspiration on
the major biotech trends, technological innovations and policy issues that
affect the industry’.
Basing on the experience of the earlier BIO
conferences, Henry Miller and Gregory Conko wrote in June 2004 that in the BIO
conferences ‘the biopharmaceutical sector is for the most part robust, (but) biotechnology
applied to agriculture, food production and environmental problems has a long
row to hoe’. The Indian situation now
seems to be much worse.
Bangalore Bio (BB), an annual event since 2001, organized
by the Karnataka Vision Group on Biotechnology (KVGB), the main pillar of BB, with
solid patronage from the Government of Karnataka, is a poor imitation of BIO
conventions. The Association of
Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE), which in its own words a ‘collective face
of Indian biotech industry’ is a powerful supporter of BB.
BIO works throughout the year to create a policy
environment that enables the industry to continue to fulfill its vision of
bettering the world through biotechnology innovation, while BB wakes up only to
organize the annual ceremony.
BB did have some conspicuous component of agribiotech on its programme during
the previous years. There were well
received Public Lectures on agribiotech which were
missing from 2006 and onwards. Even at
the 2008 BB meetings there was an ‘Agribiotech
Day’ focusing on four areas, with Avesthagen,
Metahelix and Indian Council of Agricultural Research
as partners.
The BB’s 2009 brochure
proclaims ‘Biotechnology beyond boundaries--the promise of
ABLE is heavily biased towards the pharma and industrial biotech sectors. Biospectrum, a much
visible biotech business magazine is also heavily skewed towards the pharmaceutical
industry, but Biospectrum cannot be charged with a
total neglect of agribiotech.
The 7th Biospectrum-BLE
Biotech Industry Surveylisted 282 biotech companies (Biospectrum June 2009).
There are 30 agribiotech and 53 plant biotech
(whatever this means) companies. There
is only one nanobiotechnology (an area of genuine modern
biotechnology) company, and stem cell research companies were not
identified. Thirty eight companies are
involved in bioinformatics, an area of biotech only by extension. Some one should explain how 53 companies that
do only clinical research and trials qualify to be classified as biotech
companies, unless the hiccup is in the use of the terms ‘biotech’ and ‘life
sciences’, which cannot be used interchangeably. How many of the remaining 107 companies
qualify to be classified as truly biotech, meaning modern biotechnological
concepts, protocols and tools? Dr
Krishna Ella said that ‘by strict definition of biotech, which is recombinant,
the Indian vaccine market is only about Rs. 1,000 to
1,600 crore, including the sales of the MNCs’ (Biospectrum Juy 2008).
Obviously, the majority of the pharmaceutical and
industrial sector companies operate on the basis of age old technologies
but jumped on the bandwagon of biotechnology to garner publicity and benefits. Against this, one wonders why AMUL and United
Breweries find no place among biotech companies, when they are heavily into
fermentation technology.
During 2008-09, of the top 10 Indian biotech
companies two (Rasi Seeds and Nuziweedu
Seeds) are agribiotech. During 2007-08, vaccines contributed to about
47 per cent (Rs. 3,265 crore
out of the total biopharma
revenue of Rs. 6,900 crore),
while therapeutics (36 per cent) and diagnostics (17 per cent) constituted the
rest of pharma market and all this is not from
legitimate biotech. In comparison the market share of agribioetch was about Rs. 1,200 crore, which is certainly considerable, though the vast
majority of the agribiotech companies are sub-licensees
of the gene constructs and only very few are actually involved in R &
D.
It is a serious lapse on the part of BB 2009 to
ignore agribiotech, an important component of the
Indian biotech enterprise.
The agribiotech industry
has not been projecting itself adequately and has to take considerable blame if
it is ignored. The All India Crop Biotechnology
Association (AICBA) comprised of agribiotech
companies is comatose and never did anything visible or effective in support of
the agribiotech sector. The handling of antitech
activism by the agribiotech industry has been very
sloppy. They should have impleaded in the Supreme Court of India in the two Writ
Petitions that are seeking a moratorium on GE crops
“Miss it! If you don’t belong to Biotech sector”, the
organizers of BB 2009 said. Agribiotech missed it.
Is it because the KVGB and ABLE, are finally convinced that agribiotech does not belong to the biotech sector?
Why did not the agribiotech
companies stand up against this insult or do they see only diminishing returns
from their investment in BB and kept quiet, if the decision was theirs?
This is unfortunate, at a time when the agribiotech sector is facing severe problems, which the pharma and industrial sectors do not. This is the time for the unity of all biotech
sectors in the country and not for divisive politics. Together they can address several important issues
like getting the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority on the book and standing
up to the ill considered opinions being expressed by the new Minister for
Environment and Forests against genetically engineered food
crops such as Bt brinjal.
July 8, 2009