Monsanto & DuPont Bury The Hatchet

(NASDAQ) – Chemicals giant EI DuPont de Nemours & Co. ( DD ), commonly called DuPont, has reached technology licensing deals with Monsanto Co. ( MON ) on genetically modified seed traits, the two companies said Tuesday. Both the companies also agreed to dismiss their antitrust and patent infringement lawsuits pending against each other in U.S. federal court.

Under the deals reached between the two companies, DuPont will make a total of $1.75 billion in royalty payments to Monsanto for the technology licensing deals, while a $1 billion jury verdict awarded to Monsanto in August 2012 in its patent infringement lawsuit against DuPont will be dismissed. Monsanto is the world’s largest seed company.

The agreements between DuPont and Monsanto include a multi-year, royalty-bearing license for Monsanto’s next-generation soybean technologies in the U.S. and Canada. Through these deals, DuPont’s subsidiary, DuPont Pioneer will be able to offer Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans as early as 2014, and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Xtend glyphosate and dicamba tolerant soybeans as early as 2015, pending regulatory approvals.

DuPont Pioneer also will receive regulatory data rights for the soybean and corn traits previously licensed from Monsanto, enabling it to create a wide array of stacked trait combinations using traits or genetics from DuPont Pioneer or others. Meanwhile, Monsanto will receive access to certain DuPont Pioneer disease resistance and corn defoliation patents.

As part of the deal, DuPont Pioneer will make four annual fixed royalty payments from 2014 to 2017 totaling $802 million for trait technology, associated data, and soybean lines to support commercial introduction.

Additionally, beginning in 2018, DuPont Pioneer will pay royalties on a per-unit basis of Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Xtend for the life of the agreement for continued technology access. Annual minimum payments through 2023 will total $950 million…” Full Story Here

Related articles

Monsanto Up, DuPont Down After Settlement & Deal (blogs.barrons.com)
Deal Sprouts For Monsanto, DuPont (cen.acs.org)
Monsanto, DuPont bury the lawsuit hatchet, set to make more GMO (rt.com)

Low Risk of Raw Milk

I have never been able to stand the taste of milk and don’t care to drink it raw or otherwise. However, I fully support the basic human right of having a free choice over what to put in our bodies. That something so simple as MILK has become a major political issue really disturbs me. What RIGHT does ANY government have to interfere with what we consume? If the current trends continue, people will have to worry about owning even a single cow and daring to use the milk – even for personal/home use – for fear of officials coming onto their property (with guns), terrorizing them and then penalizing them financially or by loss of freedom…and that is NOT OKAY!

————

“The unfortunate truth is that, no matter what we eat, all food has some inherent risk.  The question is of course, comparative risk.  At a conservative estimate, there are at least 10 million raw milk drinkers in the United States (no similar survey was done for Canada), based on a 2006 consumer survey (this estimate does not even take into consideration any increase over the last 7 years, and we all know that consumer demand has vastly increased).  But for these 10 million raw milk drinkers, we do not see thousands or millions of them dying each year. In fact, there have been two raw milk related deaths since 1997, and at least one of these two was actually linked to illegal raw queso fresco cheese.

In its report “Outbreak Alert!  2008. Closing the Gaps in our Federal Food Safety Net“, The Center for Science in the Public Interest (2008) published this chart (page 21), showing that when adjusted for consumption, dairy, including the consumption of fluid raw milk, had a lower risk than even produce.” Full Article Here