Picman, this was the first time I have heard this topic mentioned on BBC at all. Maybe I have missed other programmes?
Thank you for pointing it out and the link.
The problem is not just British seeds. If it was, that might be addressed by getting out of the EU, but there are much larger treasures of heirloom seeds in Eastern and Southern European countries. We need to work together for all our sakes to make all European seeds and all seed saving organisations, small traders and seed exchanges safe. Or the overall losses would be catastrophic. There are still many varieties growing in rural areas of many countries, grown by families over generations, that have never been listed anywhere or grown by anybody else. Seedbanks sometimes do expedition journeys and collect massive amounts of diverse seeds. But these usually stay in seedbanks unfortunately. We need quite a lot more freedom for our non-commercial seeds.
What really annoys me is when a variety is taken to the US with immigrants, becomes a mainstream variety there and is eventually re-imported to Europe. As others have said, the best place to look for traditional European seeds is the USA! Sad but true. What we need is a European effort to treasure and safeguard our European seeds. This is why I was perfectly happy to sign the german language petition from the Austrian Seed Library 'Arche Noah' which was the first petition around to fight this proposed law. In this instance, we are all in the same boat, I think.
This registration business is so inappropriate. So much is lost and so little gained by this proposed legislation.
