What's Happening to EU Seed Diversity?!

10 thoughts on “What's Happening to EU Seed Diversity?!”

  1. I think everybody has it wrong… excluding GMO Seeds, NO SEED should ever be regulated or banned for any reason… especially any food seed, flower and medicinal seeds. Regulationg seeds is purely profit and control motivated and is unconscionable!

    No one has the right to tell me or anyone what foods they can grow or eat!

    No one has the right to profitize seeds by legislation or treatise in favor of corporate profit or greed!

    Just my honest feelings on the whole topic!

    J.B. Oregon, USA

  2. Hi Janina,

    Thanks for your interesting article. It seems that you have done also some research concerning the seed law in the US.

    By chance I read another article where the author claims that “… The US adopted the same criteria and operations to enforce quality controls (as in the EU), but they left the system voluntary. That means that you don’t have to register and get certification if you don’t want to. The divergence ends there, however. Seed laws and plant breeders ‘ rights are so intimately entangled that often the same government agency and the same field technicians take care of both. It’s rare to find certified crop varieties that are not locked up with plant breeders ‘ monopoly rights as well.”

    I have a question about understanding this. Is it so, that in the US you DON NOT have to register for your seed, but the seed you want to sell is probably already under the control/protection of some large scale farmers. Am I understanding this correctly?

    Thank you in advance.

    Yinan, Bonn

    PS: you can find the article I mentioned here: http://www.grain.org/article/entries/456-seed-laws-imposing-agricultural-apartheid

    1. Hey Yinan, to be honest most of the research that I have done so far on seed laws in the States concern the seeds protected by intellectual property right regimes such as GMO crops. I read the article the same way as you, though – you don’t have to register the seed you are selling, but it is very probable that there is some intellectual property right on the plant variety whose seeds you are growing. The US is also interesting in that it has a special subsection of its intellectual property law specific to plants and seeds (where, for example, it allows the growing and saving of seeds for the next harvest explicitly), but much of the debate concerns the fact that GMO plants are licensed under the normal copyright instead of the special agricultural arrangement. I wrote about some of these arrangements here: and here: as well as here: Thanks for your interesting comment!

  3. Article 25
    Official labels produced by the competent authorities
    Where the official labels are produced by the comp
    etent authorities, as referred to in point (b)
    of Article 22, the competent authorities sha
    ll carry out all necessary field inspections,
    sampling and testing in accordance
    with the certification schemes,
    adopted pursuant to Article
    20(2), to confirm compliance wi
    th the production and quality
    requirements adopted pursuant
    to Article 16(2).

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