27.01.2014, 01:33

Dear subscriber of our petition on the EU-seed regulation,

will the proposal of the EU Commission will be rejected in the next days or not?

The negotiations on the new seed regulation in the AGRI committee of the EU Parliament are at a crossroads!

On the one hand: nearly all the coordinators of the political groups signed an amendment "The European Parliament rejects the Commission proposal." Very nice! If this would be accepted it would help a lot, because the Commission would have to re-draft the proposal.

On the other hand the commission and the ESA (lobby of the seed industry) did much lobbying last week. They want to be the proposal accepted by the Parliament with only little changes, because this proposal privileges the industrial varieties, very homogeneous and stable, and by this it discriminates biodiversity and farmers varieties.

The commission talks about a "level playing-field" for all operators. Unfortunately economy is not a game but a battle - and a level battlefield at DUS-criterias would privilege the strongest operators, the transnational seed companies like Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical and KWS with their industrial DUS-varieties.


We have to act against their lobbying just now! On Mon 27 Jan (today) in the afternoon the AGRI committee is discussing the rejection, on Tue 11 Feb they are going to vote on the rejection.

Please call you MEP, especially the members of the AGRI committee! The earlier the better! You find the telephone numbers of their offices in Brussels below. Please tell them that you are concerned of the seed legislation and ask them for the rejection of the Commissions proposal, because of its many negative impacts.

A redrafting would provide the chance to prepare a new and much improved proposal:
- which keeps farmers production and marketing of seeds free of bureaucracy and thereby could really consider the farmers rights to produce, exchange, sell and use the seed they want,
- which enables the registration of organically bred varieties in an appropriate manner and
- which keeps the maintaining of agrobiodiversity free of bureaucracy.

You may refer to the Vienna Declaration "Protect our natural heritage, biodiversity and resulting food security!" www.eu-seedlaw.net which is signed by more than 40 organisations from all over Europe and translated into 16 languages. Please mention: The best way to allow diverse varieties on the open market would be to make a shift from a compulsory system of registration and certification to a voluntary one. (Please do not let disturb you: this would NOT allow GMO - they are subjected to another regulation, the Directive 2001/18/EC ... on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms!)

Please act now!

With best regards
Andreas Riekeberg
Campaign for Seed Sovereignty
www.seed-sovereignty.org


Telephone numbers of MEPs (members and substitutes in AGRI) from:

Spain:
Iratxe GARCIA PEREZ: +32(0)2 28 45646
Sergio GUTIERREZ PRIETO: +32(0)2 28 45331
Esther HERRANZ GARCIA: +32(0)2 28 45274
Gabriel MATO ADROVER: +32(0)2 28 45237
Alejandro CERCAS: +32(0)2 28 45455
Ricardo CORTES LASTRA: +32(0)2 28 45814