by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Despite the fact that they stated when everyone went up in arms against this new proposal that home growers would be, for the time being, exempt from this legislation about seed registration it would appear now that the recent confirmation by the European Court of Justice has changed the game again and the compulsory registration of all seeds in the Official catalog will also apply in that case.
A new law, called the “Plant reproductive materials law”, introduced by the European Commission, a body that has not been elected by anyone, remember, now makes it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any seed of vegetables was not "tested, approved and accepted" by the new European “EU Plant Variety Agency”, and that includes giving seeds away for free or swapping.
The aims of the “Plant reproductive materials law” is to make all plants and seeds the virtual responsibility of government and only the real big companies can afford the thousands of Euro required to register each and every plant and varieties thereof.
Home gardeners, allotment holders and such like, who grow their own plants from seeds not listed would be considered criminals under the law. In fact, even collecting seeds from your own plants and using them is, under the legislation, as it stands, a crime.
According to Ben Gabel, the director of natural seed that grows heirloom vegetables, this legislation will put an end immediately to the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic farmers, and the small market gardeners. Home gardeners have really different needs – for example they are gardening by hand, do not have computers and are unable or unwilling to use chemical sprays. There is no way to save the varieties suitable for home use because they do not meet the strict criteria of the “EU Plant Variety Agency”, which deals only with the approval of the type of seed used by industrial farmers.
Virtually all plants, vegetables, seeds and gardeners will be finally registered by the governments and the European Union.
Pursuant to paragraph IV of the proposed EU law on the registration of varieties in national registries and the Union: Varieties in order to make them available on the market throughout the Union, will be included in a register or in the Union a national registry through a process of direct application by the EU Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO).
Gardeners and growers will also have to pay a registration fee to the EU bureaucracy to record their seeds, and those fees are in the thousands of Euro per individual variety.
According to the proposed legislation, the competent authorities and the CPVO would levy a fee for the processing applications, formal and technical examination, including audits, variety denomination and maintenance of varieties for each year for the duration of the recording. And the only ones that can afford such exorbitant costs are the big agri-businesses who have been lobbying the EU hard (cash in hand), such as Monsanto, Astra-Zeneca, Bayer, DuPont and a few others.
A bureaucracy gone crazy (but then again, nothing new here as far as the EU is concerned)
Everything that this new law does is to create a ton of civil servants in the EU paid to move mountains of paper all day while removing a supply of seeds to home gardeners and interfering with the rights of farmers to grow what they want.
It is also very annoying they have arrogated unto themselves the power to regulate and give permission in the future for all species of plants – not just agricultural plants, but grasses, turf, flowers, all – without anyone having a say or vote in this.
This idea is basically the "final solution" of Monsanto, DuPont and other seed corporations who have long admitted that their goal is to completely dominate all the seeds and crops in the world. By criminalizing the private cultivation of vegetables – transforming gardeners criminals – the EU bureaucrats can finally give full control of the food supply to those powerful corporations, who will also apply intellectual property to each and every individual seed variety thus making the retention and reuse of seeds, should they even be capable of reproduction, a crime. Food control is the name of the game.
Most heirloom seeds will become criminal
Most heirloom seeds, if not indeed all, will become criminal and that includes the possession of them.
This is to say that to save seeds from one generation to replant the following year – based on a sustainable way of doing things – is going to become a criminal act. In addition this law effectively kills off the use of seeds for home gardens in the EU.
This is of course the ultimate desire of all governments. Namely to criminalize any action of autonomy and make people completely dependent on corporate monopolies to survive.
And this is true in the EU as much as in the US. That's what governments do. They take control, one sector at a time, year after year, until people end up living as slaves in a global dictatorship. We are well on the way to this unless people will take action against this and I doubt that a change in government, in a ruling party, will make any difference there. If voting would change anything they would have made it illegal by now.
Seeds are on the verge of becoming a contraband product. Anyone grow their own food is about to be targeted as a criminal. World governments, conspiring with corporations like Monsanto, do not want a person to be able to grow their own food.
© 2013
