European Union Seeks to Ban Heirloom Seeds and Force Garden Registration

If the global domination is allowed to take root, biotech and Big Agra will control the world food supply, at the expense of personal liberty.

We don't accept this. Let us keep our seeds EU!


The European Commission is changing the European Union’s plant legislation, apparently to enhance food safety across the continent. This move has sparked a heavy  opposition from many, saying that the measure will threaten seed diversity and favour large agrochemical businesses. This new law creates new powers to classify and regulate all plant life anywhere in Europe. You can view the entire proposal in the list of sources at the bottom of this article.

The “Plant Reproductive Material Law” regulates all plants. It contains restrictions on vegetables and woodland trees, as well as all other plants of any species. It will be illegal to grow, reproduce, or trade any vegetable seed or tree that has not been been tested and approved by the government, more specifically the “EU Plant Variety Agency.” This agency will be responsible for making a list of approved plants and an annual fee must also be forwarded to the agency if growers would like to keep what they grow on the list. The new law basically puts the government in charge of all plants and seeds in Europe, and prevents home gardeners from growing their own plants from non-regulated seeds. If they did, they would now be considered criminals.

The draft text of the law has already been changed several times due to a large backlash from gardeners.

This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers and small scale market farmers. 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 – Ben Gabel, Director of The Real Seed Catalogue
It seems the government is taking over everything, virtually all plants, vegetables seeds and gardeners are to be registered by the government. What’s even more disturbing is that all heirloom seeds will be criminalized. This means that saving seeds from from one generation to the next will become a criminal act!

This law was written for the needs of the globalized 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. Freely reproducible seeds should be a human right, they are part of our heritage.

I understand this is to protect the business of big agri-companies, but registration and testing should be voluntary for all non GMO, non-patented and non hybrid seed.

So what can you do?

Please sign the petition!  http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/We_dont_accept_this_Let_us_keep_our_seeds_EU

Sources

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/05/european-commission-to-criminalize-seeds-and-plants-not-registered-with-the-government/

http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/european-union-seeks-to-ban-heirloom-seeds-and-force-garden-registration/

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/pressroom/docs/proposal_aphp_en.pdf

http://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/review_eu_rules/index_en.htm

http://www.aseed.net/new/en/seeds/in-the-news/1171-critisism-on-proposal-eucommission-for-seed-laws

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/05/overhaul-of-eu-seed-regulations-.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html

In the UK You Can Now Only Buy Heirloom Seeds if You Are Part of a Private Members Club 

The way we are being pushed and squeezed by regulations that govern every facet of our life, we will soon only be able to defecate when our allotted time slot comes around.

The European Commission is currently drawing up a new law to regulate the sale of all seeds, plants and plant material. The latest draft of the law is even more restrictive than the regulations that we have at the moment.
Every single variety of vegetable will have to be registered on an EU list, otherwise it will be illegal to sell it. To be registered on the list, seed varieties have to pass a series of tests demonstrating what is called DUS ‘Distinctiveness, Uniformity and Stability’. It costs nearly £3000 to test & register just one single variety of seed for sale.

Although we have had a system like this for many years, there have been much simpler and cheaper options for what are considered ‘amateur varieties’ for home gardeners, and the rules have never been strictly enforced in the UK.

The EU wants to get rid of these simpler and cheaper rules for ‘amateur’ seed, and make sure that every country enforces the rules 100%.

Although they say there will be exceptions, in current drafts of the law these are very, very limited.

The effect of this new legislation will be to massively limit the choice of vegetable varieties available to home gardeners.

This is because if you are selling seed to farmers, you can expect to sell hundreds of tonnes of seed every year, so it is worth the cost of registering the variety. But if you are selling to gardeners, even the biggest seed companies will be selling a few kilos of seed at most, sometimes just a few hundred grammes of more unusual varieties. It just doesn’t work if they have to pay thousands of pounds to register that variety! So only seed designed for farmers will get registered and be legally sellable.

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Read the full article at: theorganicprepper.ca

Source:
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php/news.discovery.com/earth/article.php?id=30336