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."
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.
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