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EU Seed Law Discussion October 2021

The EU seed industry has just published a new issue of it’s trade magazine, including the main arguments under discussion for an update of the EU seed law. Ostensibly there are two sides to the discussion, one for updating the EU seed law, and the other against.

The against side is presented by a representative of the EU seed industry.

The for side is presented by Austrian seed saving organization Arche Noah. In fact Arche Noah has suffered a similar fate as sister organization Seed Savers Exchange of the US. They accepted money from the wrong people, which resulted in the management being largely expelled. They exist now in name only, as a brand, and are completely unresponsive to their membership. They claim to represent seed savers, farmers and so on, but I am unable to see any evidence of this. The reality is they now represent the people who have taken over the organization, which ultimately comes down to the wealthy families who control the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The EU seed industry says the seed laws have served them well for decades now. They say a number of things have changed recently, climate change, biodiversity strategy, EU Green Deal, and so on. In addition there are new technologies and ways of testing seeds. All of these could justify minor adjustments to the EU seed laws, but not opening the whole can of worms of legislation.

Arche Noah pretty much only says they want to bring EU laws in line with the CBD. The CBD is actually a very large legal instrument now, and what Arche Noah means specifically is the ABS (Access and Benefit Sharing) provisions of the CBD. There are actually a number of parts of the CBD that deal with farmers and seed savers rights, but these are less interesting to them. They are also only pursuing a small relaxation of the EU seed laws, for the purpose of aggressively marketing and monetizing a few specialized crops, probably by way of organic certification, something not very useful to true seed savers and farmers. For seed savers the consequence of these changes would probably be significantly more administrative burden and violation of privacy, by way of registration requirements and plant health red tape.

I say there are two sides to this discussion, but in fact, the wealthy families who now control Arche Noah are also the ones who own and control the seed industry. It’s a bit like the left hand arguing with the right, and it seems almost certain the seed law will change for the worse. There’s a reason both sides of the argument appear in a seed industry trade magazine.

The Reality for Seed Savers

The EU seed laws are a major problem for seed savers, and have been for decades now. At the same time, seed savers have found their way around some of the barriers, and negotiations have taken place with the seed industry. For a long time genetic resources were considered to be in the public domain, and in most places there were full breeders’ rights. This meant industry plant breeders could frequently trade materials with independent plant breeders and seed savers, and these trades often took place.

On the other hand, completely the opposite is true with the CBD. Representatives of the CBD have taken over and gutted organizations that once represented seed savers, stole their seeds and treated them like brand names that they could use to represent their members. The CBD has been promising for decades to support the worlds biodiversity, but every year they fail to reach their own targets. There is virtually no chance of success here.

Seed savers cannot accept anything but very minor administrative burden for what they do. They also cannot accept registration requirements that require them to state in detail the varieties they work with, or to submit to DNA testing of their plant materials, because this is a serious violation of their privacy. Of course almost all seed savers would like to cooperate with controlling plant diseases and pests, but this has to be based on risk, and can’t have an unreasonable or intrusive administrative burden or DNA testing. They cannot accept any registration fees. Seed savers cannot accept patents on life.

Much has been said about the difference between commercial and non-commercial food and seed production. Most seed savers, independent plant breeders and small farmers don’t have the expectation of making large amounts of money from what they do, but at the same time need to cover their expenses and survive financially. Of course everyone needs to have a light at the end of the tunnel, and sometimes these people hope for a time they can make real profits with what they do. It’s not always possible to accept a partner in this kind of activity, and so there needs to be a reasonable possibility to grow independently. This whole financial picture needs to be renegotiated from time to time. With climate change and and the collapsing of biodiversity worldwide, there should be good financial potential for seed savers, and they should be free to pursue this legally and independently.

Realistically, seed savers cannot cope with these revisions of EU seed law. If we try to organize efforts to lobby for a good outcome, this will be undermined and taken over by the same people who have taken over seed saving organizations. We don’t have the money. Too many points of view make coming to a common statement too difficult.

Proposal for EU Seed Law Change

The best seed law outcome for seed savers would be a withdrawal of the EU seed law directives.

The seed industry should be happy with this. The seed laws could be replaced with industry certification. Industry could set their own rules and procedures. What is now done by civil servants could be done in-house by the seed companies, who could manage the costs themselves. Marketing could be managed with relationships with supplies. Best of all there would be no more of these legislative revisions of the EU seed law.

Arche Noah won’t be happy with this, but if what they say about implementing the CBD and supporting the rights of seed savers is true, they will support the idea.

Implicit in this would have to be no patents on life, and full breeders’ rights. Full breeders’ rights is the idea that plant varieties can be protected, but the genes within the varieties cannot. This means if a plant breeder crosses a protected variety with a different but related plant, the cross and resulting generations are unprotected until a new stable variety is created and protected.

Also implied in this is biodiversity exists in the commons. Industry uses and profits from biodiversity, and must pay for it’s maintenance, but also has a responsibility to share it. If a public domain variety is genetically engineered, the result is a public domain variety. If a protected variety is genetically engineered, as long as the variety is protected so is the genetic engineering.

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Why Access and Benefits Sharing is Neither

Access and Benefits Sharing

This is currently at the heart of The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In principle, what it means is that the world’s genetic resources are available for everyone to use, and everyone is guaranteed access. In addition, there is a predefined mechanism that ensures people who work with biodiversity are paid fairly for what they do. While this sounds very laudable, it couldn’t be any further from reality.

The Collection

The first step was defining what exactly were the world’s genetic resources, and putting them in a central place. The place was the global seed vault in Svalbard, Norway. The plant materials were supposed to be donated by their owners, but this too was far from reality. Most countries just declared their genetic resources as owned by the treaty, so all that had to be done was find and seize them.

In other cases the person in possession was deemed the ‘owner’, and consent was all that was necessary was to obtain a sample. In almost all cases there insufficient information for informed consent. It was simply common practice to share samples of seeds with others. In addition, these often involved seeds bred hundreds of years before, and it was impossible to get the consent from the original owner(s).

In the US the head of the largest Seed Saving organization the Seed Savers Exchange refused to give his consent, so he was thrown out of the organization. In an equally unfriendly way, the largest European organization Arche Noah lost their collection. Organizations were infiltrated, seeds were seized or samples of everything obtained. Public and private seed collections were absorbed, and often every effort made to ensure unofficial seeds were put beyond use. In the first Golf war, Iraq’s seed collection was bombed, to put it out of use. It was really impossible for anyone to say no to having their seeds seized, and original contributors of seed samples to collections were not consulted.

Access

In principle, anyone who wishes to work with biodiversity can request a seed sample from a local genebank. It’s the assumption that the use of seeds will be monetized, so for example people suspected of just being simple gardeners may not have access. It is however a very firm principle that the seeds belong to the CBD, and those requesting a seed sample are only borrowing the genes inside the seeds. This is often established on the national level by treaty, and sometimes it’s necessary to also sign a written agreement so complicated that many lawyers could not say what the consequences of it might be. The use of the seeds come with administrative requirements beyond the ability of most seed savers, independent plant breeders or small businesses.

Many seeds currently in genebanks are degrading. All seeds need to be regenerated periodically, or they will die. In addition the methods used are the most cost effective and sometimes flawed, resulting in the loss of genetic information. In order to truly preserve seeds, regeneration needs to be done ‘in-situ’, that is on real farms or gardens. Seeds regenerated in geenbanks do not adapt to changes in climate or the emergence of new pests and diseases.

The principle behind obtaining seed samples from a genebank is that the genes inside the seeds will eventually be used commercially, and royalties will need to be paid for this. If the genetic material is eventually sold, for example to a home gardener, this person will only have a legal right to plant the seeds and use the products of this. The end user does not have the right to save seeds, replant them, share with others or otherwise use the biodiversity.

The proper use of biodiversity is enforced with DNA tests. Just like it’s possible to determine who your ancestors were with a DNA test, in the same way it’s possible to determine where your seeds came from. Since people plant seeds and use biodiversity, there are major privacy implications with these DNA tests.

In principle, ordinary seed savers and individuals do not have to follow these rules, but again the reality is something very different. Exactly who is a simple seed saver and who is an entrepreneur, or an actor, or a user of biodiversity is under intense discussion at the moment. It’s not clear who has to follow what rules. In addition, everyone is bound by the legality of obtaining seed samples from a genebank, and everyone is subject to a lawsuit or criminal prosecution.

In addition, since Access and Benefit Sharing amounts to privatization, someone owns the genes in the seeds you are using. That means, even if you are a seed saver or individual and not subject to the rules and administration of using those seeds, you still need to think about who is ultimately going to get the royalties, what conditions are going to be imposed on the end user, what the royalties are going to cost and so on. Plant breeding is difficult enough, and plant breeders often struggle to find the single gene they need for a particular trait. Combining all of these aspects makes things almost impossible.

There is the argument that yes, plant breeding and seed saving will become too complicated for an individual to manage, so what’s necessary is to joining an association or organization. The reality is everyone working with seeds needs to involve themselves with hard core capitalism.

Benefit Sharing

The benefit sharing part are the royalties someone pays. In theory you, or the organization you belong to, can negotiate a cut of the profits. This is assuming you produce a commercially product. Since the seeds are ultimately owned by the worlds wealthiest families and individuals, they will certainly benefit the most.

In theory, all the world’s biodiversity has been collected and cataloged as part of the CBD. The reality is the US is not a formal part of this treaty, but in fact offers a great deal of cooperation. This means under some circumstances, some biodiversity in the US is still ‘free’. This offers some possibilities to work around the CBD, but as a result countries all over the world cracking down on importing ‘illegal’ seeds, creating a cat and mouse game that’s adding another layer of complexity on everything else.

Unworkable

This entire approach is unworkable. The world has changed since the idea of Access and Benefit Sharing first came about, and it’s not necessary to fund biodiversity in this way anymore. There is a huge amount of damage caused by the collection of biodiversity and storing in genebanks. There are many flawed assumptions about the level of cooperation people will offer, and what technology is capable of achieving.

Our house is on fire, and it’s time to move on from all of this.

Simply maintaining all seeds as public domain was a viable solution for hundreds of years, and people are able to find their own motivation for working with biodiversity on these terms.

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What to do about anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdowners, 5G mobile protesters and so on…

In Europe there’s a new phenomenon of groups protesting these issues, often violently. We sort of all know they are coming out of America’s far-right groups in an election year, but many people don’t really understand where they come from, what they mean or what to do about them. Most people think the only thing to do is ignore them, but by understanding them better there’s much more we can do to confront them.

Here in The Netherlands, there are groups who have appeared out of nowhere, and members who have been identified as cocaine users and people previously involved in violence related to football (soccer) matches. They don’t really have any spokespeople or figureheads, not a lot of organization or public debates on their issues and in general not a lot of sense in what they’re doing. They are well enough organized to apply for demonstration permits and pay fees, and estimate the number of people attending, but otherwise don’t seem to have the backing of any known organization. In general, they just seem like they’re out for a fight with the police. In a small country like The Netherlands, this really stands out. It’s not like they can just be strangers from ‘out of state’. They have to be locals, and someone should know who they are and where they came from.

The mainstream press, especially English language, is also playing a role here. The BBC for example had a sort of spooky infomercial article on this, with very little real news, but rather a video with strange people saying weird things, and completely lacking any point. This kind of article just gives legitimacy where there was none before. A local news website that mostly has translated news from Dutch outlets, had an article highlighting the difference in childhood MMR vaccination rates between 2019 and 2020. The suggestion was this was an indication of the anti-vaccination trends in the country, but what the article didn’t say is there was no MMR vaccination program in the country before 2019, as is the case in a lot of places outside of the US. There is also simply no need for an anti-vaccination movement here, because there are no mandatory vaccinations. The article also said the parts of the country where the vaccination rates were the lowest were the most religious, as if the people choosing not to get vaccinated were the least educated or most abnormal. It was a completely misleading cooked-up article, either a paid placement or someone completely unfamiliar with the topic just blindly translating a misleading press release.

The Difference Between Organic and Artificial Movements

The Black Lives Matter is a good example of an organic movement. It’s clear what the issues are, and there are sympathies worldwide. It comes from unarmed black people being killed by police, and the demands are clear. There are large numbers of people speaking very clearly about it on social media as well as the mainstream news. Disagreements that may exist in the movement are minimal and unimportant. There are also clearly no overriding business interests behind this movement.

Vaccinations, 5G mobile services and covid-19 lockdowns all have business interests behind them. I think most people would agree that none of these are really interesting enough to go out and demonstrate over, and hardly interesting enough to even have a discussion about them. In fact, if we have any position or opinion about these issues at all, it probably comes out of statements made by other people, and we probably take issue with some of these statements.

The fact of the matter is it costs huge amounts of money to ‘create’ movements like this, something only a billionaire could afford. It costs money to pay for misleading press releases, to create and run organizations that appear out of nowhere. You have to pay for lobbyists to cause politicians to react to the issues, for people to give misleading information on social and mainstream media, pay for trolls to disrupt constructive exchanges on social media, and so on. This is really a major amount of money, especially when you consider this is not just limited to a single country but movements being created worldwide.

Consider Vegetarianism as an Example

I think most people now know every vegetarian is different, with different reasons for not eating meat. Some are vegan, some eat fish on Fridays, some eat meat once a month or only at restaurants when they eat out. As long as someone considers themselves a vegetarian, they are. Furthermore there are no health risks, and as long as you are eating a fairly normal and varied diet, there is no risk of deficiencies.

As a vegetarian now for about 40 years, I’ve really seen the issue evolve quite a lot. If you’re young and reading this, you probably missed a lot of this. At the beginning it was more about needing to remind people, because the concept was a little bit new and there was some confusion. When someone gave you food, it was always necessary to look at it carefully to be sure. There was also the discussion of chicken broth in otherwise vegetarian soup and so on. For a long time it was always necessary to pay attention to quantity, because if a nicely prepared vegetarian dish is present in an otherwise all meat buffet, there often won’t be enough left for the vegetarian if others go first. It also isn’t possible for example to have a nice meal only eating a salad made from iceburg lettuce, and there needs to be a little variety and some starch or vegetable protein. Some people took this to mean all vegetarians were hostile, picky, greedy and wanted non-vegetarians to be forced to eat vegetarian food.

At some point there were enough vegetarians the meat industry started to notice. There’s big money in meat, and a drop in consumption of even a few percent gets noticed quickly. The food industry started investing in everything I mentioned above, like lobbyists to influence food policy, food pyramids in school to teach school children that meat and diary were some of the most important things to eat. There were ads on TV, and later on the Internet. Organizations popped up out of nowhere supposedly promoting vegetarian food, but actually just furthering the divisions and misinformation that already existed. It became necessary to establish exactly what kind of vegetarian each was, and it became impolite for example to not provide fish to a vegetarian who expected it, or eggs and dairy to a lacto-ovo vegetarian.

Now, thankfully, we are at a more normal situation with vegetarians. Vegetarians are free to choose what they do and don’t eat, and to be vegan if they want Most people understand it’s acceptable to serve vegan food to someone who says they’re vegetarian, or an all vegan meal to a large group of people when many dietary preferences have to be taken into account. Meat eaters are allowed to enjoy an occasional vegetarian meal, if they want. Living in The Netherlands where a great deal of the world’s meat is produced, I can also say people eating less meat has had a major impact on the environment. The long term damage of past meat consumption is also very visible here.

Anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdown, anti-5G mobile services

So back to the main point of this post. Why are these things an issue, and why are billionaires spending money trying to bring these things forward? The reason is there are financial and political issues behind them, and they are trying to create confusion and make anyone who may have legitimate arguments against them to seem like crackpots.

What can we do about them? There is a very simple answer to this. We can work backwards from the confusion they are trying to create, then understand what the underlying issues are and start a dialog over the real issues. Instead of the 40 years it took the world to do this over vegetarians, we can work together to do this in a far shorter time for vaccinations, the covid-19 lockdown and 5G services. If as a society we can be more effective at settling these issues based on truth, we will eliminate the reason for billionaires to cause this sort of disruption with fake news in our democracies. Indeed, if we learn how to work backwards from the issues billionaires try to create in this way, we can make it counter productive for the billionaires to try in the first place.

Working Backwards

Here are some of my ideas for working backwards from these issues. If you think I’m wrong, or extreme or whatever, rather than marching off in a huff I challenge you to do your own research and come up with your own ideas. Here are some of my thoughts.

Covid-19 Lockdown: Ending the lockdown benefits large companies depending on cheap labor the most. It’s also the billionaires who’s money is invested in these companies, who are both benefiting the most from the current government bailouts as well as have the most to lose from a prolonged downturn of the economy.

5G Services: Mobile services have become too cheap to be profitable. In order to be profitable a mobile subscription has to cost at least about $12/month. Companies that offer cheaper subscriptions are often doing so at a loss, hoping to keep you as a customer for future more expensive services. For example, I have a 4G subscription costing about $5/month with a reasonable package of calling and data. When 5G becomes available in my area, they are going to have to offer a lot more than a faster data connection and a larger package to up-sell me.

5G antennas are very large and ugly, and must be placed closer together than 4G. Setting up the system is very expensive, and requires a lot of energy and finite mined resources. I don’t think it’s very sensible that governments are allowing such a system to be built and clutter the landscape, as long as 4G continues to work well. At least at the moment, I’m not able to see any added value of 5G.

Vaccinations: Just like everything else in the world, all vaccines are different. There can be different reasons to be concerned about safety. There are many different ways of creating vaccines, including GMO and synthetic biology techniques, and there are different reasons for being concerned about the safety of these techniques. There is the much discussed issue of herd immunity, and many vaccines won’t work on their own but require some existing herd immunity. Does this mean the vaccine is faulty? Is it really the responsibility of the rest of us to provide this herd immunity for the vaccine manufacturers?

Many vaccine programs started in the 1960s. What have we learned? Are the vaccines given then still necessary today?

What about the survival rate for diseases like German measles? We know the basic method for treating a Covid-19 patient. Can these methods be used for measles patients, and will this bring the fatality rate down near zero? Clearly the measles vaccine isn’t working properly, because we still have outbreaks, and people who are vaccinated still contract the disease. Would we be better off if everyone was allowed to contract the disease as a child, and stop with the vaccinations? Why or why not — in detail please?

The issues surrounding vaccines are so varied and complex, there’s much more than I can go into here. The subject deserves open discussion, and those who want to discuss it deserve more than just to be shouted at and called an anti-vaxxer. It’s not just an issue for scientists, and the rest of us just have to trust what they say. This is a topic that needs to be explained in a way everyone can understand it, and from an independent perspective. Everyone needs to make their own decisions.

The same rules apply to comments on this post as others. In general everything goes, except spam or attempts to intimidate others. This is especially true when it involves repetition.

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A Seed for Change

Starting with the economic crisis of 2007-2008, Alex Ikonomidis wrote, produced, directed, shot and edited the film A Seed for Change. In total the film represents 7 years of work. It’s a very good representation of the seed movement of the time, with it’s passions and motivations. It includes interviews with some of Europe’s most important figures.

Alex has now released the film for everyone to view. On his website linked to above is the film with subtitles in 4 different languages; Greek, English, French and Arabic.

I hope readers of this blog will consider making a donation on his website.