A new law proposed by European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government

[silverfish]

http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html
full article at link above

BREAKING: European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government

A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to "grow, reproduce or trade" any vegetable seeds that have not been "tested, approved and accepted" by a new EU bureaucracy named the "EU Plant Variety Agency."

It's called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.

"This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers," said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. "Home gardeners have really different needs - for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can't or don't want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There's no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don't meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers."


Virtually all plants, vegetable seeds and gardeners to eventually be registered by government
All governments are, of course, infatuated with the idea of registering everybody and everything. Under Title IV of the proposed EU law:

Title IV Registration of varieties in national and Union registers
The varieties, in order to be made available on the market throughout the Union, shall be included in a national register or in the Union register via direct application procedure to the CVPO.

Gardeners must also pay fees to the EU bureaucracy for the registration of their seeds. From the proposed law text:

The competent authorities and the CPVO should charge fees for the processing of
applications, the formal and technical examinations including audits, variety denomination, and the maintenance of the varieties for each year for the duration of
the registration.

While this law may initially only be targeted at commercial gardeners, it sets a precedent to sooner or later go after home gardeners and require them to abide by the same insane regulations.

Most heirloom seeds to be criminalized
Nearly all varieties of heirloom vegetable seeds will be criminalized under this proposed EU law. This means the act of saving seeds from one generation to the next -- a cornerstone of sustainable living -- will become a criminal act.

In addition, as Gabel explains, this law "...effectively kills off development of home-garden seeds in the EU."

This is the ultimate wish of all governments, of course: To criminalize any act of self-reliance and make the population completely dependent on monopolistic corporations for their very survival. This is true both in the USA and the EU. This is what governments do: They seize control, one sector at a time, year after year, until you are living as nothing more than a total slave under a globalist dictatorial regime.

An online petition has already been started on this issue and has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures so far.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/We_dont_accept_this_Let_us_keep_our_seeds_EU

NOAH'S ARK and 240 other organizations from 40 European countries have also initiated an "open letter" appealing to Brussels bureaucrats to stop the insanity. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fseedpolicy.arche-noah.at%2Fen%2Feu-seed-law%2Ftake-action%2Funterschreiben for a translated version of their petition.

[christian]

There has been an outrage over this, and so they made concessions. Private farmers and micro-corporations would be exempt from that law. However, they're still in the process of outlining all the details, the eventual law is expected to be formulated and become active in 2016. It has got to be observed if they will have flip-flopped again by then.

Have not seen this news on an English site yet, here's it google-translated from Deutsche Wirtschaftsnachrichten (http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdeutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de%2F2013%2F05%2F06%2Fnach-protest-sturm-bruessel-blast-zugriff-auf-private-gaerten-ab%2F).

[silverfish]

I have only just seen this so just finding out whats been going on so thanks for the link Christian if you have any other news on this please keep us up to date.Had to come at some point .
After the campaigning concessions have been made but this can be withdrawn at any time from what I am reading.

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw.html


WHAT IS THIS LAW?
On Monday May 6th a draconian new law was put before the European Commission, which creates new powers to classify and regulate all plant life anywhere in Europe.

The "Plant Reproductive Material Law" regulates all plants. It contains immediate restrictions on vegetables and woodland trees. (It also creates powers that can be used to restrict any other plants in the future, but the details of how this will work are left for later.)

Under the new law, it will immediately be illegal to grow, reproduce or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been tested and approved by a new "EU Plant Variety Agency", who will make a list of approved plants. Moreover, an annual fee must also be paid to the Agency to keep them on the list, and if not paid, they cannot be grown.

WHY IS THERE A NEW LAW?

Officially, it is to simplify and bring up to date lots of old laws , and 'increase consumer protection', whatever that means.

In reality, it seems to be mostly about the globalised agribusiness seed industry needing new laws to cope with gene patents and plant patents, and to be able to register 'their' industrial varieties or genes safely and securely before selling them in large quantities to industrial farmers, who might otherwise save the seed and sell it or use it themselves without paying a royalty fee.

The needs of the millions of people who grow normal vegetables on a normal scale have been overlooked, probably because they don't have any highly-paid lobbyists inside the EU helping write the law.

THERE WAS A FUSS ABOUT THIS- WHAT HAPPENED?

The first drafts of the law were exceptionally badly written. They really did imply that people couldn't even swap their own saved seeds with their neighbours for free. (This may have been simply poor wording, or deliberate, it was not clear which.)

Following a huge outcry and intense lobbying from consumer groups, small-scale farmers, genebanks, and even some member-state governements, some last-minute changes were made, which have reduced the impact slightly. It is still a bad law, just not as bad as they initally proposed.

WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY?

The law starts from the premise that all vegetables, fruit and trees must be officially registered before they can be reproduced or distributed. This obviously is a major restriction on seed availability, as there are all sorts of costs in both time and money dealing with the bureaucracy of a central Plant Variety Agency. Then, after making that the basic rule, there are some exceptions made in limited cases:
•Home gardeners will be permitted to save and swap unregistered seed without breaking the law.
•Small organisations can grow and supply unregistered vegetable seed - but only if they have less than 10 employees
•Seedbanks can grow unregistered seed without breaking the law (but they cannot give it to the public)
•There might be easier (in an unspecified way) rules for large producers of seeds suitable for organic agriculture etc, in some (unspecified) future legislation - maybe.

SURELY THIS IS OK THEN?

No, not really. These concessions might be helpful, but are still limited. They are subject to all sorts of 'ifs' and 'buts' in the small print. And the small print hasn't been written yet, and in fact won't written until long after the law has been approved.

So we have no idea if they will survive into the final version in any useful form. Remember, they only made these changes after a huge public outcry - and given what they thought was a good idea to start with, our confidence in them is not very high.

And the rest of the law is still overly restrictive - there are all sorts of rules about labelling & sealing packets for example - and in the long run will make it much harder for people to get hold of good seeds they want to grow at home or for small scale sustainable agriculture.

For years the availability of freely reproducible open-pollinated seed suitable for sustainable agriculture has been shrinking due to the seed laws, and this new law doesn't address the problem. It just considers the needs of the agri-tech industry and makes it easier for them to market their industrial seed on a big scale.

WHAT IS THE BASIC PROBLEM?

The real problem is having a starting point that all seeds are prohibited unless officially tested and registered, and then adding some small exceptions as an afterthought.

This is really back to front - testing and registration should be voluntary. Then some people (like massive industrial farmers) who might want the sort of seed that can pass certain types of test - they can choose to use the 'officially registered' seed.

And normal people would be free to choose freely what they want to grow from all the myriad of normal seed in the world.

There are also clauses that mean the above concessions could be removed at any time in the future without coming back to the Parliament for a vote.

NOW WHAT HAPPENS?

This is a starting point - it is a draft law, not the final thing. Next it must go to Parliament for modification or approval, so there is still the chance of changes for better or worse. All the competing and vested interests will try to change it for their own benefit.

And almost everyone involved - either as a lobbyist or a bureaucrat - is only thinking about the needs of industrial farmers, not small-scale agriculture . So we must all campaign for small farmers' and home growers' rights, to make sure only improvements are made!

WHAT DO WE WANT?

This law was written for the needs of the globalised farm-seed industry, who supply seed by the ton to industrial farmers. It should not apply at all to seed used by home gardeners and small market growers, who have very different needs.

Freely reproducible seeds are an inalienable part of our heritage. Listing and official certification of vegetable seeds might be helpful for industrial-scale farmers, but it should be a voluntary scheme that people can choose to use if they need it.

So we are calling for registration and testing to be voluntary for all non-GMO, non-patented, non-hybrid seed. That would fix all the problems with the law, while still allowing the giant agri-companies to protect their business the way they want.

But if that does not happen, then the law needs improving - because allowing tiny organisations to supply seed outside the regulations is a good start, but it is not sufficient.

Only in this way will we have a broad supply of quality seed for the needs of home gardeners and small growers.


EVEN MORE INFORMATION - and a warning

The problem with this law has always been that the Summary says lots of nice fluffy things about preserving biodiversity, simplifying legislation, making things easier etc etc - things we all would love - but the Articles of the law actually do completely the opposite. And the Summary is not what becomes the law.

[soleil]

that little fiction that natural news mike adams is writing about seeds being illegal, and having to smuggle them is becoming more real. anyone read that yet?