And the bio companies move out

And who said direct action doesnt work.
Congratulations to all who put up the consistent critique.


Scottish biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics Ltd is pulling the plug
for at least three years on New Zealand's first transgenic livestock
field trial - in which more than 4000 sheep are grazing Waikato
pastures.


No details have yet been announced on the fate of the New Zealand flock
of genetically engineered sheep producing milk containing a human
protein, now that PPL has canned its plans to develop a lung drug
extracted from the GE milk.


PPL - which created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1997 - announced today it
was laying off 90 per cent of its staff - between 90 and 140 jobs in
Edinburgh and New Zealand.


PPL's project is based on a 50ha farm at Whakamaru, 140km south of
Hamilton, and it had been in the process of buying another property so
it could begin milking cloned ewes later this year.


PPL is thought to have as many as 1000 transgenic ewes among the 4000
sheep on its 50ha South Waikato property, which has been building up its
flock numbers in preparation for milking.


The milk was to be taken from the ewes, frozen and sent to Edinburgh for
the removal of the protein recombinant alpha-1-antitrypsin (rAAT).


Recombinant proteins are human proteins produced outside the body, often
by genetically engineering herd sheep or cattle and then harvesting the
proteins from their milk.


Shares in PPL Therapeutics fell nearly 10 per cent overnight in Britain
after the biotech entrepreneur said it had interrupted the development
of recombinant hAAT with drug company Bayer AG.


PPL had worked for three years with Bayer, which was due to carry out
clinical trials and marketing, with PPL developing and making the
protein.


But PPL last night expressed "disappointment" that its German partner
had effectively pulled the plug on the whole scheme.


"In the light of today's joint announcement by PPL and Bayer concerning
the future of the hAAT programme, PPL also announces today a significant
restructuring of its business," the company said.


It would instead focus on the potential for building a surgical sealants
business around PPL's Fibrin I programme, designed to offer surgical
sealants for a potential market of 3 to 4 million operations a year in
the United States. The hAAT protein was a major component of PPL's
business, both in terms of its research and development activities and
also its manufacturing capacity. The company said it had retained its
intellectual property for hAAT "and will seek to maximise value for
this".


"In the short term, placing this programme on hold will mean the
potential loss of between 90 and 140 jobs in the company at its sites in
Scotland and New Zealand," the company said in a statement.


The final number of job losses in the Waikato and at its Roisin head
office near Edinburgh would be decided in a strategic review, but were
hoped to help halve its spending of $1.7 million a month.


The strategic review by accountancy company KPMG may see PPL
Therapeutics wound up, and its $25.3 million of remaining cash returned
to shareholders - a step some investors expected to seek at the
company's annual meeting, tonight New Zealand time.


Such a move could raise concerns in New Zealand about what should be
done with the GE sheep in the Waikato.


Environmental Risk Management Authority chief executive Dr Bas Walker
said today the authority had had no formal notice from PPL that the
status of its New Zealand transgenic flock had changed. PPL would be
legally responsible for ensuring the conditions under which the trial
was granted were not breached.


PPL chief executive Geoff Cook said Bayer's decision left PPL with
intellectual property but little chance of developing it in the short
term.


"We have got few options other than to reduce cash burn," he said. "What
we can offer shareholders ... is a sealants plan with Fibrin 1,
liquidating assets, or the sale of the company."


The assets to be liquidated would include its New Zealand operation.


PPL is reported to have written off nearly $22 million last year after
dropping plans for building its new manufacturing plant for the hAAT
from its New Zealand sheep.


Analysts said the PPL experience indicated that great technology did not
necessarily make great business. A little over a month ago PPL dropped
plans for a centre to produce a range of Dolly-type drugs, but said at
the time it remained committed to developing hAAT.


PPL had said it hoped to launch the product in 2007, but there have been
fears in investment circles that the company would run out of money
first.


PPL was given permission to "field test" its genetically engineered
sheep in New Zealand on March 23 1999, when it already had a flock of
100 transgenic sheep at Whakamaru, 140km south of Hamilton. It bred the
flock from semen imported from Scotland, with permission given by the
Environment Ministry's interim assessment group -- the forerunner to
Erma -- in 1996.


The hearing on the field trials was one of Erma's highest profile public
hearings. It was told by the authority's own Maori advisory committee,
Nga Kaihautu Tikanga Taiao, that some Maori found the insertion of human
genetic material into other species culturally offensive and abhorrent,
and said the bridge between human and non-human species should not be
crossed.


PPL's then managing director, Ron James, said he wants to lift the
flock's size, first to 1000 ewes and later to 10,000, but it promised
that no more than 5000 sheep would be based on its initial quarantine
site in the Waikato.


Erma, a semi-judicial body of eight experts, said the adverse effects of
the genetic engineering were outweighed by the beneficial effects
"taking into account the scope for risk management".


A containment regime proposed by PPL, together with additional controls
imposed by Erma, would adequately contain the organism, the authority
said.


The controls included keeping all sheep in containment approved by the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), and disposal of all waste
milk, sheep carcasses and any biological material on site or by
incineration.


Unauthorised people and other organisms would be excluded from the
farms, its 2m-high perimeter fencing electronically alarmed and
individual sheep tagged and implanted with microchips.


The transgenic sheep have been modified with copies of human genes from
a Danish woman to produce the human protein alpha-1-antitrypsin (hAAT).


The company has said this could theoretically be used to treat
conditions such as cystic fibrosis and acute respiratory problems,
although a vocal critic of the PPL project, New Zealand scientist Robert
Mann, told regulators that preliminary trials overseas using AAT proved
very little



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