The EU “Plant Reproductive Material Law”

national | eu | press release Saturday February 01, 2014 18:51 by Don MacThomais

The U.S. has seen its fair share of cases where backyard gardens and rain collectors are shut down through regulations and otherwise intimidated out of proliferation.

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.This would see cancer giving foods propping up the cancer medication business in Ireland

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.” [...] 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.

Now, official policies to support this kind of dominance by biotech, pesticide companies and other plays in big agribusiness are being pushed through in Europe, in this case by the European Commission through a truly bunk proposed law.

Arjun Walia, from Collective-Evolution.com, writes:

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.

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.” [...] 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.

If this takes root as law in Europe and elsewhere, it will contribute towards the total subjugation of the people to the undue powers granted to biotech and Big Agra.

The Real Seed Catalogue has warned about this tyrannical law and the business interests behind it. They say that under this bad law, “It costs nearly E3000 to test & register just one single variety of seed for sale“:

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

According to the Real Seed Catalogue, the bill was heard by the EU Environment and Agriculture committees, but has been reworked due to significant public outcry. As of Nov. 2013, they reported, “The feedback we’re getting from all the MEPs is that they are receiving hundreds of emails, and they really know that there is a problem

Mr. Gabel went on to say, “This is an instance of bureaucracy out of control. All this new law does is create a whole new raft of EU civil servants being paid to move mountains of papers round all day, while killing off the seed supply to home gardeners and interfering with the right of farmers to grow what they want. It is also very worrying that they have given themselves the power to regulate and license any plant species of any sort at all in the future - not just agricultural plants, but grasses, mosses, flowers, anything at all - without having to bring it back to the Council for a vote.”
This is just insane. I have heard people in this country lament that we are not more like the Europeans. God forbid.