Okay, so here’s what I know.
I made this post a year and a half ago. It seems the EU has quietly put through a directive that may allow the relaxing of seed laws in some cases, but it’s still not very clear what it means. It does however seem like different countries are free to interpret the directive in different ways.
A few months before this, Association Kokopelli in France was fined for selling unregistered seeds. I’ve since heard some conflicting information on the size of the fine and don’t know if there were appeals. What I understand was at issue was a per variety registration fee for the 1000 or so varieties on offer at Kokopelli.
About a year ago, Søren left a comment here and mentioned some seed companies in Denmark were experimenting with selling some unregistered seeds and it was expected Denmark would go in the direction of Sweden, which allows the sale of unregistered varieties in small packets to home gardeners.
I’ve now just had an email exchange with a local friend, who is planning himself to register several hundred varieties here in the Netherlands. He gave me the impression the organization he is a part of plans to register many more varieties, and he says this can now be done for €25 per variety. He said money was available to pay for these registrations, so he won’t have to pay it himself. I don’t know where this money is coming from, but I have the impression it’s a lot, and they are trying to register as many new varieties as possible.
I was also in a food store a few days ago, one that was not likely to be selling unregistered varieties. I was in the produce section and I had a choice between different kinds of beets; chioggia, yellow mangel, golden and standard red. As far as I know, other than the normal beet, these are unregistered varieties in Holland, unless they were recently registered.
Further, I had a conversation with someone in the UK this fall, who mentioned an effort was under way to register UK landraces, apparently as part of this EU directive. I was under the impression it was being done in kind of a stupid way, and in reality the UK has just not decided if and how they want to relax their seed laws.
If, as it seems, this EU directive is so vague it in effect allows countries to relax their seed laws as much as they want, there’s a bit of a chaotic situation going on with seed laws in Europe. It’s really hard to get any information on this kind of thing, because it tends to be in out of the way places and in local languages.
Does anyone have any idea what’s going on in other places in Europe or have any information I don’t have? Please, let us all know!
Low Cost Registration No Solution
Just for the record, I don’t consider low cost variety registration to be an acceptable compromise in the debate over EU seed laws. Any registration needs to meet the so-called DUS standards, meaning breeding materials and genepool mixes would remain illegal no matter what. In addtion, the profit involved in selling heirloom seeds is too small for independent seed companies to be able to afford these registration costs. Low cost registrations only ensure large seed companies will control the distribution of these seeds.
