For at least 9 months, Biotech has been buffeted by headwinds associated with the Great Economic Crisis. But now, a streak of positive trial results and some good-looking deals seems to have revivified the sector. At least a little.

The latest heartening development comes from Exelixis, which announced that it has licensed 2 experimental oncology drugs to Sanofi-Aventis in a deal notable for an upfront payment of $140 million to the South San Francisco-based company.

That followed last week’s announcement by MAP Pharmaceuticals that late stage results from a trial of its migraine drug were strongly positive.

In other news, Amgen agreed to exercise its option on Cytokinetics’ experimental heart-failure drug, a decision worth $50 million to the Biotech company, and J & J agreed to pay $900 million to Cougar Biotechnology for its experimental prostate-cancer drug.

That’s not even counting Dendreon, which raised $221 million in a secondary stock offering after astounding most observers with strongly positive results on Provenge, its prostate-cancer vaccine.

The uptick follows a prolonged slump prompted by the economic swoon which cut Biotech’s umbilical cord into the financial markets. Particularly hard hit were small, undercapitalized companies.

Many thought Big Pharma would snap up such companies, but what little M & A activity did transpire in recent months featured drug giants feasting on themselves instead, as exemplified by Pfizer’s acquisition of Wyeth and Merck’s merger with the Plough.

“The process we’ve been going through has been painful for the small companies,” Barclays Capital’s Jim Birchenough told the Wall Street Journal.  Maybe we’re seeing “the beginning of a better environment,” added the analyst, who recently upgraded his rating on the sector from neutral to positive.

If House leaders have their way, the US food supply chain will soon be more transparent, food facility inspections will be more frequent and food producers will be required to help prevent food-borne illnesses like last fall’s Salmonella outbreak caused by tainted peanuts from Georgia.

Henry Waxman, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee and compatriot John Dingell have introduced legislation that would empower the FDA to, among other things, recall tainted food, quarantine suspect food  and impose civil or criminal penalties on violators.

The bill would require growers, manufacturers and food handlers to identify contamination risks, act to prevent them, and document such activities for the Feds. It would also require that private labs used by food manufacturers report to the Feds when they detect pathogens in food products.

“This (legislation) has been needed for decades,” Erik Olson told the Washington Post. Olson, who oversees food and consumer product safety issues at the Pew Charitable Trust, added “we’re still operating under a food and drug law signed by Teddy Roosevelt.”

Consumers including the Big O himself had grown increasingly nervous about food safety following outbreaks of E. coli in California spinach and salmonella in Mexican jalapeno peppers.

But things really hit the fan last fall when numerous deficiencies in the US food handling system were exposed by the peanut caper in which the Peanut Corporation of America shipped Salmonella-laced peanuts which found their way into thousands of products, resulting in 900 illnesses and 9 deaths.

In the aftermath, investigators determined that federal inspectors had not stepped foot inside PCA’s offending Georgia facility for years, and that a private lab used by PCA found contamination on multiple occasions but never reported its findings to regulators.