EU proposal to ban vegetable seeds that are not registered or licensed

I hope I'm putting this in the correct forum - if not, mods please move it - thanks.

The proposal is to ban vegetable seeds that are not registered or licensed, which would result in the loss of many rare varieties of vegetable. This would be great for big companies like Monsanto, but a disaster for farmers and gardeners. As a gardener I'm disgusted that this proposal has even been put forward.

Hello everyone who cares about our seeds and our freedom to use, exchange and sell them.
There is urgent action needed against the upcoming EU seed marketing law. The new regulation will de facto ban old and rare varieties and farmers varieties and stop the exchange and selling of traditional seeds.

DG SANCO (the Directorate General of the EU for Sanitary and Consumer affairs) has been working on a proposal for a new regulation for years, driven by lobbying of the globalised agricultural seed industry .The seed industry is pushing the legislation hard, they've spent a lot of money on it.

However, two other EU directorates, DG AGRI (agricultural affairs) and DG ENVI (environmental affairs) both oppose the proposal because it is so bad for agriculture and biodiversity! So DG SANCO is pushing ahead with the new law anyways by putting it directly to the Commission this week.

There is only a little chance to get a majority of commissioners to vote against the current proposal, but we still should try.

Each country of the EU has one commissioner in Brussels, so we need 14 votes against the proposal. The commissioners of DG AGRI and DG ENVI should vote against, so we need 12 more.

Please write to at least the commissioner of your country and convince him/her to vote "NO" on the proposal of DG SANCO on 6th of May.

Try to make a link from his/her department to the seed issue, and try to make clear to him/her that the proposal for a new EU seed legislation will affect the cultural and biodiversity heritage of your country and the freedom of farmers to use the seeds and the varieties they want to.

SAY NO TO PROHIBITION OF SEEDS OF DIVERSITY!

By forcing registration of all varieties of every crop species that exists, the new law will prohibit old, rare and traditional public-domain farm varieties. This will guarantee huge profits for the seed industry but will be a terrible loss to the people of Europe as our agricultural heritage is outlawed overnight!

Please write to your commissioner in Brussels no later than the 28th. He/she has to make a statement on the proposal from 24th of April on, the sooner, the better. On the 6th of May, we must obtain at least 14 objections, otherwise this proposal will become the official proposal.

Source: realseeds.co.uk

I'd urge anyone who cares about this and lives in an EU country to visit the link and ask your representative to object to this crazy new law - do it now as there is not much time!

Please, if you do, keep it short, polite and to the point - it's not your representative's fault, but they are there to speak out for you.

reply to post by FireballStorm


Uh huh. It's all about global corporate control of our food supply.

S&F& & :bump:

This is so stupid & infuriating. There aren't enough words in any language on the planet, or combined, to describe just how ASININE this push for seed control has become. do these idiots not see the slippery slope limiting the seed variety is? What happens when your oh-so-precious damn GMOs & trademarked seeds are hit with a crop disease that wipes them out? Eh? If you ban anything not up to your par, then what's left? Not thinking so far ahead are we?

Even if this doesn't pass, secret away as many heirlooms & rare varieties as you can while you can, you may need them in the future more than any seed bank can compensate for. Mankind has a way of screwing nature's delicate balance up pretty badly

Such a sad state of affairs, but unfortunately one that some of us could see coming a mile away. It will not be long, before this type of legislation is tried here in the US.

Because for some reason, we in the US love us some monsatan and want them to have total control over us.

reply to post by Nyiah


And people wonder why I think the seed bank is not for some great disaster, but for the "elites" to not have to endure what will be forced upon us. We won't be able to harvest seeds from veggies or anything before long, if we don't start or continue to due it now, while organic is still available to us.

Control the food, control the people....

All part of their plan. They're greedy control freaks.
Sad, what they're doing to our world ...

Un-f***ing believable....but there you go, about 3 weeks ago they passed the licensing laws on homeopathic remedies! New Era and Weleda are discontinuing supplies to shops. Grab your remedies while you can

Rainbows
Jane

I live in an EU country, have always lived at.

To be honest, I used to happy about it. I and most other people I know like that EU at least up to some point cares more about people than the corporations, compared to USA:

Thousands of chemicals have been banned from food industries and other industries, simply because they are not good for health and might cause diseases. Please somebody do not talk about freedom to choose... If many of these substances were allowed, there would be nearly no products to choose from, as most companies go for the cheaper alternatives. It would create a situation similar to US, where nearly every product produced by corporations has some bad chemicals in it... Currently every US product sold in EU needs a special recipe. The Mars chocolate in US and in EU have different recipes, as EU has banned several things used in the Mars.

Recently I have noticed the corporations trying to get into EU. First the GM crops were unbanned in EU, although very strong evidence had to provided for safety concerns and only a few sortiments were allowed. Currently 8 countries have banned these again, although they have had problems with the Committees who do not like such action.

Another thing that disappointed me was the decision to not ban insecticides that cause bee deaths. The lawyers of the companies and some agricultural companies providing/using such insectides managed to pull of another stunt by lobbying well enough to have the ban not created.

Now this???? What are they thinking. If something like that would be passed, it would kill so many small farms. There are so many good sortiments of local crops, every country has so many different ones and now this??? It is only in the interest of corporations not the people. In democracy the majority of people should matter not the few who want to harrass the majority.

I seriously hope EU will not become into corporate USA, where the health and interests of the local people are often valued less than the "rights" of the corporations to earn larger profits by putting cheaper very unhealthy chemicals in their products or doing something against the will of the majority .(I hope I do not offend any US people, although I believe most of you see that corporations have too much power & can often get the laws they are interested in)

So far Europe has done the right thing regarding food.
Hopefully we won't see that trend ending.

That would be the strictest immigration law I could think of. Seeds require a green card

reply to post by Nyiah


Relax. Your stirring yourself up over a report not a reality.

One thing is certain in this world.

95% of what we worry about never happens
3% is of no real consequence when it does
2% we cannot change anyway.

That's a much better way to live.

Why are so many people on ATS falling victim to fear and worry and borderline insanity?

Can someone answer that?

reply to post by MadMax7


I'd say i guess it's because some people actually care about the world, the enviroment, people and society. Not everyone likes to stick their head in the sand, thankfully.

The insidious power of agro business is something to keep an eye on. Monsanto for example have already screwed up millions with agent orange, pesticides, DDT to name a few. Are these really the kind of companies we want running our food supply !

Get educated on the issues ! if no one knows what's going on then we all wake up one day in a very bad place, especially if no-one cares to protest.

Control the population through food.
control their money
track their every move through cell phones
keep them in constant fear..

Yep,. nobody owns their own life anymore..

Best bet,.get your own non GMO seeds while you still can
and keep your health,. cuz once "They" get ahold of you,. let the cancers begin

I am in the US, but I have begun saving heirloom seeds. I also plan on saving the seeds from everything I grow this coming summer. Maybe it is time to start buying and saving heirloom seeds for people over there too.

Pretty gay, cause basicaly the best peppers or chillis you can possibly buy here in the UK are from the immigrant communities who have brought them over from India and basicaly grow them themselves, all sorts of weird and wonderful hybrids. Nobody really has a clue how to grow them bar them.

Though I imagine this only really applies to multi million dollar agricultural bio tech firms and massive agricultural wholesalers who operate within the EU. After that horse meat fiasco, its probably a good idea.

Grab them up while you can NOW, stupid appears to be in charge and rolling on the earth.
The banks want control over food and water.
A recent Nestley executive spoke of this.

Dude this thread makes me want to curse these stupid idiots off our planet. What morons. Enslave the whole world idiots-do you think that you will remain on top? No you will fall when we fall, and we will all be there to laugh at you.

reply to post by FireballStorm

There might be a way to get around this (at least in Germany), should this really become law (which I highly doubt).

Plant your "unregistered or unlicensed" seeds on land that qualifies as a biotope or a "water protection area" (do this by planting or giving shelter to endangered and protected species on your land).
This way the "unregistered or unlicensed" plants themselves become protected within the protected habitat.
They can ban the seeds all they want, they can't touch them anymore.
I'm sure there must be similar possibilities elsewhere throughout Europe.

The best scenario would be to reject this stupid proposal of course.

reply to post by samlf3rd

That is not what we want to do ,prison is enough. A real curse is a dangerous thing especially against those most favored by he who would emplement said curse.

If this gets allowed in it will be the straw that broke the camel's back. It HAS to be !! How much more of this insanity do they want to push on the world?!
Prison isn't good enough- you know they'll pay their way out of it and be back to their games in no time, with even worse schemes. These crimes against humanity and global ecology need to cease NOW.. what can we do people?