10/8/04 POSILAC® Allocation Announcement
copied from
DAIRY-L posting on 10/11/04

The following announcement has been sent to customers via email and express mail today:

We're pleased to announce a change in supply of POSILAC® bovine somatotropin for our current customers. You will soon be able to order more POSILAC.

Effective December 1, 2004, as a current customer, you will have access to an increased supply of POSILAC. You will be receiving a package via Federal Express on or before Monday October 11, 2004, showing you how many doses you can choose to take. The amount you see will represent an increase from 50% of your historical shipments to at least 70% of those shipments. This letter will include a form for you to tell us if you'd like to receive these additional POSILAC doses. Please select the option that works best for your operation, and return it by November 19, 2004. If you do not respond, we will continue to ship you the same amount of POSILAC you are currently receiving. If you choose not to increase your shipments at this time and in the future you decide you would like to increase your shipments, you will be eligible to take the two previous months' unshipped doses for your herd.

In addition to the change in allocation, we are eliminating the formal Subscription Agreement program based on feedback from our customers. While we are eliminating the formal SA program, we are keeping the benefits producers told us they liked from the program, specifically, the current SA discount and the convenience of an automatic shipping schedule. The current SA discount is not changing for customers who were on an SA agreement and they will continue to receive that discount throughout this period of limited supply of POSILAC. Regular deliveries of POSILAC will be based on their current shipping schedule.

We previously announced that the limited supply of POSILAC would last at least through 2004 to allow time to implement manufacturing improvements and corrections at our supplier's plant. Based on our current manufacturing projections, we expect the supply of POSILAC to be limited well into 2005, with incremental increases occurring over time. Our current time estimates are based on our evaluation of a combination of factors including the time needed to implement and gain FDA acceptance of required corrections and improvements at our supplier's plant and our prediction of customer demand for our product.

Until then, meeting your demand for POSILAC is our top priority. We are doing everything possible to meet that demand. Only after 100% of the needs of our current customers have been satisfied, will we begin to supply new and previous customers.

If you have questions about the increased availability of POSILAC and how it might affect your operation, feel free to contact your Monsanto Dairy representative or our Customer Care Center. We encourage you to work with your Monsanto representative and other on-farm advisors to adjust your plans for using POSILAC with the increased number of doses available.

We look forward to hearing back from you so you can take full advantage of the additional POSILAC now available to you. We'll be keeping you informed as we continue to make progress with manufacturing. As always, we sincerely thank you for your business.