Regulatory threats to seed exchanges and plant movements

[ChrisB]

I'm seeing a new outbreak of panic on Facebook today about the European Govt going ahead with regulation of seed for commercial growers, with an eye to gardeners in the future.  Is this a new thing or a bit more of what we already know?

[Maggi Young]

There was some talk in December that there may be a chance for the  proposed legislation to be amended again and re-presented  :

Quote from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html
"LATEST UPDATE 19 December 2014

As of this month, it is still looking like the most probable result is that the seed law proposals will be formally withdrawn - it is on the 'kill list' of Commission proposals. However, there is still some possibility that there may be a move simply to modify it - the wording on the Commission document says:

"Following its rejection of the proposal in 1st reading in April 2014, EP has asked COM to withdraw in letter by EP President dated 11/09/2014 D(2014)41887."

Which sounds like a withdrawal, but apparantly leaves a window open for modification to be agreed instead. We will post more details as soon as we have anything further to add - almost certainly after the Christmas break at the earliest. "


 And the "EU Issue Tracker " site  says :

EU Plant Reproductive Material Law
Commission proposal for a Regulation on the production and making available on the market of plant reproductive material (plant reproductive material law) [COM(2013)262 final] | Dossier 229 | Status: "Current Proposals" | Updated: 20 Jan 15  -   

 but I have not yet found the full details.

[ChrisB]

Thanks Maggi  Here is the link from the Facebook alert: http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html

[Cruickshank Friend]

Yes, that link is to an older report. I think at the moment the proposals are still in limbo.  It's something that may return in future though. 

[Hillview croconut]

If I may join in?  There is obviously a very strong desire by the EU Commission to get something done about this.  Equally there appears to be a very strong desire by the trade to resist having their interests subsumed by bureaucratic zealousness. I AM SURE there is a lot of argie bargie going on behind the scenes.

Wouldn't it be in the interests of the SRGC (and hopefully the AGS and the Hardy Plant Society) to RESTATE their position at this stage to the Commission or the Committee?  Proactive defending, a bit of joining together for the common cause,  having a strong and united front would seem like a good stance to take? Even a bit of a mail around to pollies, etc who took up the cause and acknowledged the natural right of individuals to be free of such over-binding regs wouldn't be a bad idea.
We are collateral damage in all of this, just dross on the workshop floor and too easily forgotten about.  Its up to the parent bodies to ensure this doesn't happen. We shouldn't wait to be stomped on.

Any ideas about this?

Cheers,  Marcus

[Maggi Young]

If what Michael Wickenden  of Cally Gardens says in his latest catalogue is fact - and I personally  have no reason to doubt him - it could prove hard in many ways  to get official responses made to the Commission from the various plant organisations.
I am glad that we have at least tried to raise awareness here.

I quote Michael's comments :

"Prison for Plant Hunters and Thirty Years of Cally Gardens

Thirty years ago I was writing my first catalogue by the light of an oil lamp in my cottage on the banks of Strangford Lough, County Down, with curlews calling on the shore and the Mourne Mountains visible across the water. Having spent years collecting and propagating plants I had over 800 varieties and was ready to try my hand at being a nurseryman. Inspired by Graham Stuart Thomas’ book Perennial Garden Plants, I decided to specialise in unusual perennials, and the selection process was simple; anything Mr Thomas liked  but Blooms Nursery did not have, I went for. This paid off and I was able to start a nursery with virtually no capital on half an acre next to a tumble down cottage with no electricity. This was possible because I, along with everybody else, had free access to the greatest ‘capital’ of all, nature.
I remember when it dawned on me that there are 300,000 species of plants out there and that I could grow, propagate and sell any of them. The following year I moved to Cally Gardens in South West Scotland.

As soon as I had sold some plants and made some money I wanted to go plant hunting to see them in the wild and, I hoped, to collect some seeds. I decided to go to Chile that was just beginning to emerge from the very dark days of the Pinochet regime and had been off the plant hunting agenda for some years. I did not assume that I could just wander around Chile collecting seeds. I did not know what the position was so I went to the Chilean Embassy in London where a charming Chilean diplomat was surprised but pleased that I had bothered to ask for permission at all. I spent three months travelling up and down the Andes and some of the plants I raised from the seed are still around, including  Scabiosa ‘Chile Black’, Mitraria ‘Lake Caburgua’ and  Buddleia globosa ‘Cally Orange’.

I hardly realised it at the time but I was making use of the right to interact freely with nature that we all took for granted in those days - the right to grow what we wanted for sale and to collect seeds subject to the normal standards of courtesy. Thirty years later those rights have mostly been removed, by people who had a financial interest in doing so. First Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) used the quite reasonable argument that plant breeding should be rewarded to introduce something very different, a system that awards the rights (in effect a copyright on a plant) whether plant breeding has taken place or not. This happened despite an on the record
promise by the government that PBR would only be for the results of long expensive breeding programs.

I can no longer comb the nursery catalogues looking for new varieties for my customers because many of them are subject to PBR, and because PBR are available retrospectively. If a variety is selling well the grower can obtain PBR and then propagation for sale becomes illegal. Any I have grown in the meantime must be thrown away or a royalty paid that is then passed on to my customers. They are likely to end up paying for plant breeding that never took place. A major source of new plants is no longer available.

The plant hunting situation has changed dramatically in the last few months.
The Nagoya Protocol,  part of the Convention on Biodiversity, was approved by the EU parliament in March 2014 and states that plant hunters, who do not have a benefit sharing contract with the government of the country they are in, are committing a criminal offence with two years in prison as the ultimate sanction. These contracts are unlikely to be available for small-scale horticultural collectors such as myself. Botanic Gardens and other prestigious
organisations that can get them are not allowed to release any of the material collected to gardeners because the ‘intellectual property’ stays with the country of origin.
(No one has ever explained how natural genetic resources that have evolved over millions of years, such as plants, could be anyone’s intellectual property.)
As  a result another source of new plants has gone, along with the most exciting aspect of my work.

The horticultural writers and personalities who earn their living from the gardening public have done little to alert them to these fundamental changes. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS, an organisation of which I was a member for forty years) not only failed to inform its members and promote discussion; they quietly conducted meetings with the government that legitimised the process. These took place in May 2014 when they were simultaneously heaping praise on Crug Farm’s fine display of wild collected plants at the Chelsea Flower Show. Perhaps the idea is that the gardening public’s appetite for new plants is to be satisfied by the stream of patented novelties that attract a royalty, rather than wild collected plants that are supposed to remain
in the common domain. It is worth remembering that without plant hunters there would be no gardens, no RHS, no Chelsea Flower Show, and no patented novelties.
My conclusion is that this privitisation of nature away from common property is incompatible with the sort of gardening I have lived by all my life. Surely nature is not ‘intellectual property’, it is life and life should not be owned. For the background to all this, as I see it, please go to  www.callygardens.co.uk   have a look at
my essays  ‘The Nurseryman as Plant Hunter’  and  ‘Who owns Nature’.

Michael Wickenden."

[SJW]

What an excellent albeit depressing article by Michael Wickenden. The comments about the RHS are very interesting. If members aren't impressed by RHS's actions then we should let them know - without the members there wouldn't be an RHS...

And what are Kew's and RBGE's views in all of this?

[Maggi Young]

Not very easy to find information on that, Steve, from Kew, RBGE or most  places.
The RHS rel;eased this statement 19th December 2014:
http://press.rhs.org.uk/RHS-Science-and-Advice/Government-Relations-Statement--EU-Plant-Reproduct.aspx 

 I quote from it here :
"RHS statement in response to the withdrawal of the proposed EU Plant Reproductive Material legislation from the European Commission’s Work Programme for 2015

Following the rejection earlier in the year by the European Parliament (EP) of the proposed EU Plant Reproductive Material legislation by 650 votes to 15, the President of the European Parliament has subsequently requested that the proposal be withdrawn. The European Commission (EC) announced its Work Programme, which sets out the legislation that the EP will be working on in 2015, earlier this week in which it signalled the withdrawal of this contentious piece of legislation.

Since the legislation was proposed, the RHS and many other horticultural institutions in the UK have been working together to highlight the potential negative effect it could have on the horticultural sector. Working with colleagues in Defra, meeting with representatives of the EU Commission, briefing MEPs, and drafting amendments to the proposals enabled us to effectively represent the interests of gardeners. The outcome, although it will have consequences for other sectors, is a testament to the effectiveness of this hard work, which has also considerably raised the profile of horticulture within the EU.

It is unclear what next step the EC will take on this issue. However the RHS will be closely monitoring future developments and liaising with other horticultural organisations to ensure that momentum on this important issue is kept up and that the interests of gardeners and the horticultural industry continue to be represented at the highest level. We will also be building links with like-minded organisations in other Member States to increase co-ordination of activities in support of horticulture.

If passed, the new law could have seen breeders having to pay a fee of between £300 and £500 to register plant names, a cost that would inevitably be passed on to UK gardeners. The knock on effect of increased costs and bureaucracy could have resulted in a reduction in the range of plants available to buy in garden centres."

Again there is mention of the continued possibility of a re-introduction of the proposals.

Is anyone aware of any contact between RHS and any other organaisations, even in the UK, about the " liaising with other horticultural organisations " ?

[Giles]

... vegetable growers already live with registration and National Lists...
£100 to register an amateur variety...  ..they take credit cards..
So it's not without precedent (I'm afraid)

[Giles]

If you're interested:
https://www.gov.uk/national-lists-of-agricultural-and-vegetable-crops

[Sophie]

Regarding the PRM legislation, there has been no announcement since the official withdrawal of the proposal in December 2014 (see http://www.hortweek.com/plant-reproductive-material-legislation-european-commissions-withdrawals-list-2015/ornamentals/article/1326823).
While this may seem as a victory, it remains worrying as the Commission might decide at any point to put it back on the table.
To reply to your "liaising with other horticultural organisations " question, the UK working group (RHS, DEFRA, NFU, Plant Heritage, HDC, BGA etc) which was set up to study the proposal, try to understand its consequences, and write amendments is still very much alive, and ready to react if...

Nagoya, mentioned in Michael Wickenden's piece is a completely different issue (global legislation, on access and use of genetic material).
The Nagoya protocol is officially in place since October 2014, however every country has to work on its own ways of implementing it. This has to be done by October 2015, but I believe that for the UK DEFRA and Kew are still working on it. For now, nobody really knows what it entails, how or whether it will be enforced at all, by whom, etc...which is the reason why the RHS has not yet issued a statement. Even gardens are only just starting to think about it - there's a PlantNetwork meeting soon on that topic (http://plantnetwork.org/news/booking-opens-nagoya-protocol-day-kew/).
For those who are interested (it's a bit dense - policy paper), here's an early report on Nagoya and how it could affect various sectors: http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=10324_WC1016_FinalreporttoDefra.pdf

[SJW]

Regarding the PRM legislation, there has been no announcement since the official withdrawal of the proposal in December 2014 (see http://www.hortweek.com/plant-reproductive-material-legislation-european-commissions-withdrawals-list-2015/ornamentals/article/1326823).
While this may seem as a victory, it remains worrying as the Commission might decide at any point to put it back on the table.
To reply to your "liaising with other horticultural organisations " question, the UK working group (RHS, DEFRA, NFU, Plant Heritage, HDC, BGA etc) which was set up to study the proposal, try to understand its consequences, and write amendments is still very much alive, and ready to react if...

Nagoya, mentioned in Michael Wickenden's piece is a completely different issue (global legislation, on access and use of genetic material).
The Nagoya protocol is officially in place since October 2014, however every country has to work on its own ways of implementing it. This has to be done by October 2015, but I believe that for the UK DEFRA and Kew are still working on it. For now, nobody really knows what it entails, how or whether it will be enforced at all, by whom, etc...which is the reason why the RHS has not yet issued a statement. Even gardens are only just starting to think about it - there's a PlantNetwork meeting soon on that topic (http://plantnetwork.org/news/booking-opens-nagoya-protocol-day-kew/).
For those who are interested (it's a bit dense - policy paper), here's an early report on Nagoya and how it could affect various sectors: http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=10324_WC1016_FinalreporttoDefra.pdf

Thanks for this update and useful links, Sophie.

(Interesting blog, by the way )

[Maggi Young]

Thank you for this informed comment, Sophie - and a warm welcome to the Forum.

[Matt T]

Interesting report Sophie references re Nagoya. I strongly believe that the principle of social justice should prevail so that big businesses can't benefit from indigenous knowledge/other countries resources without giving something back. However, it's possible that the unintended consequences for small-scale activities will be lost sight of with so many activities and industries involved/affected. Also, the activities and interests of many SRGC members - valuable research, accessions and conservation work - fall between the 'Horticulture' and 'Botanic Garden' categories which the process doesn't seem to acknowledge. I can feel the cold fingers of regulation tightening their grip.

[Hillview croconut]

Hi Matt,

This has already happened in SO many ways. I could give you lots of examples from Australia but suffice to say I, as  a small businessman who dares to do something "outside the box" is slammed with increases in fees and compliance until I am priced out of the market.  Who cares?  Certainly the bureaucrats couldn't care less because their narrow focus is only on the "big boys"  and their  own organizational interests.  The market?  It doesn't care because its interest is short term profits and it will work with the bureaucrats, whom it has leverage with to achieve that goal alone.  The consumers? They don't care because they don't know.  The garden media? They don't care (much) because they are in the pocket of the market.

Its a depressing picture. The last frontier owned lock, stock and barrel, by vested interest under the pretext of preserving biodiversity.  Cheers, M