Mike Lee
The Sacramento Bee via Agnet June 11/04

Ventria Bioscience, an embattled Sacramento biotech company, is, according to this story, looking for greener pastures in Iowa as it scales back production of pharmaceutical rice in California.

The story says the company is planting a tiny test crop of barley in Iowa that has been genetically engineered to grow lactoferrin, one of the same drug compounds the company has been growing in test plots of rice.
The company chose Iowa because barley is not grown commercially there – a consideration that didn't prevent it from pursuing pharmaceutical rice production in California.

CEO Scott Deeter was cited as saying of the barley-free state that, "That is ... really a bonus," citing Iowa's "streamlined and efficient regulatory process" and the "strong support of a very productive agriculture region" as reasons for choosing Iowa. The field test is on a plot just five-one-hundredths of an acre in size, according to a federal database.