Ventria Bioscience, a California-based company, has been flirting with establishing a rice-processing operation in Beaufort or Washington counties for years; but in a recent interview, a spokesman for the company said that a new plant wasn’t in the cards. “We have invested time, people and made capital investments in Washington County,” Scott Dieter said Friday. “We certainly plan to continue and maintain that operation. Other than that we have no plans except to grow our rice and continue to combat the number-two killer of children.” The company already operates 200 acres on various farms in Washington County where genetically altered rice is grown. But the locally grown rice has to be processed elsewhere, outside the state. It is that operation, which includes husking the rice kernels and extracting the proteins, that the counties are competing to attract.