Ventria Bioscience free essay sample

Bioscience and the Controversy over Plant-Made Medicines In this paper I am writing on the Ventria Bioscience and the Controversy over Plant-Made Medicines Case. Ventria Bioscience is a company that is trying to commercialize pharmaceuticals made from genetically modified plants. While Ventria is gaining opposition from regulators, activist, and environmentalist; they could succeed if they use their relevant stakeholders and specific strategies, information, financial incentive, constituency building, to influence regulators. There are many groups that have a stake in Ventria’s action. There are some stakeholders that hold a lower salience such as, the environmentalist, consumer advocates, and food-safety activist. Which are, Friends of the Earth, and Environmental of California. As far as market stakeholders involved with Ventria, you have the rice industry, including rice farmers and producers. These groups are apart of the market in which Ventria wants to enter into. Rice farmers can be a family owned business, whereas, rice mills tend to be owned by larger organizations such as: Agribusiness giants, ADM, Far West Rice, Pacific International, and Sun West. The public is a market because they are going to be customers for Ventria’s product. However, there are most prominent stakeholders that each have a specific interest and source of power. Beginning with non-market, Ventria has a lot of regulations to abide by; for example, the FDA, EPA, and USDA regulation. Ventria needs all three of these regulatory approvals if they even want their business to evolve. The FDA is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of food and medicines. The EPA is responsible for the environmental safety of food crops that are genetically engineered. As for the USDA, they have oversight of genetically modified crops that are being tested in fields. Given that Ventria wants to grow their crops in California, they have to be aware of the CRC, California Rice Commission. The CRC is appointed under the Rice Certification Act to review any varieties of rice, to ensure the production and milling of rice is done with a public interest. These stakeholders are standing in the way of Ventria’s attempt to solve malnutrition. For the market stakeholders it begins with Scott Deeter, president and CEO of Ventria Bioscience, he built the company, analyzing proteins and coming up with ideas. Then you have Dr. Raymond Rodriguez, he is a molecular biologist that founded Ventria Bioscience. He approached Dr. William Rutter, founder and chairmen of the biotechnology firm Chiron, to become an investor in the company. As the company progressed, Dr. Rodriguez built a board of directors of biotech leaders and seasoned entrepreneurs. This included Dr. William Rutter and Dr. Pablo Venezuela. William H. Rutter, an attorney and venture capitalist. Ron Vogal, and bio-entrepreneur Dr. Robert Crea. Later recruited to the board were Thomas N. Urban, Melvin Booth, and David Dwayer. Together these board members and their organizations provide 85 percent of financing for the company. If these relevant stakeholders were to have a dialogue, many opinions on how to reestablish the company’s protocol would be said. Specifically, strategies how to get pass the regulation issues and gain the approval of different advocates. They will need to figure out a way to address their potential risk. Environmental and consumer groups feel as though Ventria will contaminate other rice crops. If GM crops were to contaminate other crops, California will be at risk of losing Japanese exports. They would have to talk to their research and development team to deal with the risk, and where money should be spent in doing so. The board of directors may come up with the option of growing the crop in another country opposed to California. This would be a good way to ensure non-contamination, and eliminate the risk of â€Å"super weeds† being produced in California. It will also eliminate the regulation from the CRC. This could gain activist and environmentalist approval, since those were their main arguments. Another opinion may come up to write an appeal to congress. Explaining to them how they can reduce harm in countries, from the benefits of their pharmaceutical. This would put pressure on congress or even regulators to change their mind. Like the Tobacco case, regulators intervened to help the citizens. Regulators are doing this to Ventria to protect citizens from possible health issues and the environment from harm. If Ventria wants to influence relevant regulators they can go about it in three different ways. However, I feel two of the three strategies will benefit the company most. They can do an information strategy. Ventria can provide the government and policy makers with information to influence their actions. They could hire a lobbyist that would be aware of the regulations and developments that may affect the company. This representative would communicate and persuade an organizations support as they consider a particular regulation. For example, Ventria could explain their case to the CRC. They would provide information explaining their objective and express the benefits that can come from their product. If the CRC is aware that this medicine can help with malnutrition, dehydration, and diarrhea they would understand the benefits. These factors could help a lot of countries that suffer from hunger. Ventria can also have some of their CEO’s give a testimony to regulators and organizations. Given that all of them have been involved with biotechnology to some degree, they will be able to provide a great amount of facts. They can provide data to educate and influence regulators to better understand their objective. Ventria can also promote a Constituency-Building strategy. They will seek support from organizations or people who are also affected by the public policy. Reading the Coca-Cola case, citizens of India felt as though Coke had money so they could do what they want. Coca-Cola became aware that they needed to create sustainable communities or consumers wont use their product. Ventria needs to enhance groups to meet their objectives. They need to reach out to them and clarify the safety of their project and the benefits from it. This will gain their support, thus allowing Ventria to have a greater influence on regulators once they see the approval of many groups.