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To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1344)	1/22/1999 8:43:00 AM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

Monsanto seeks OK on sweetener Friday, January 22, 1999 By Robert Steyer Of The Post-Dispatch Monsanto Co. said Thursday it has asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve a new artificial sweetener that the company says is 6,000 to 8,000 times as sweet as sugar. Monsanto has spent 17 years researching and developing the sugar substitute, which was once called Sweetener 2000 and is now known as Neotame. The new sweetener would build upon the powerful franchise of aspartame-based sweeteners - NutraSweet for food ingredients and Equal for table-top uses. These sugar substitutes, now subject to generic competition, are 200 times as sweet as sugar. The Neotame application covers uses ranging from diet soft drinks to baked goods to desserts. Thirteen months ago, Monsanto asked the FDA to approve the sweetener for table-top uses, but the FDA hasn't acted yet. Monsanto's petition was made as other companies have stepped up marketing efforts of brand-name sweeteners against NutraSweet, which still dominates the sugar substitute market. Germany's Hoechst Group is selling Sunett, also known as acesulfame potassium, for use in a number of products, including Pepsi One. The FDA approved Sunett for the crucial diet soft drink market in July. Johnson & Johnson received FDA approval in April for Splenda. This sugar substitute, whose chemical name is sucralose, has been approved for 15 food categories, among them diet soft drinks. Monsanto's Neotame announcement was a low-key, one-sentence mention in the company's report on 1998 financial results. "We didn't want to raise expectations because it takes a fair amount of time to get sweeteners approved," said Lori Fisher, a Monsanto spokeswoman. Copyright (c) 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch stlnet.com