Abstract
The day where seeds were considered “material” in legal text was a decisive moment. At the European level, that was December 1, 1961, when the international convention for the protection of new varieties of plants (UPOV) was adopted by the diplomatic conference. This paper relates the semantic evolution in French and European regulations concerning seeds. Using the term “material” to define a seed sounds as an oxymoron and especially for the organic sector that highlights the concept of life integrity of plants. Semantic drifts and technical drifts are close. To consider seeds as simple material allows everybody to manipulate them, to modify them, to degrade them, to repair them, to edit them, to market them, and to patent them. The drift in regulatory texts is not insignificant; it reflects the thought of a society but can also have a sustainable impact on this thought. Therefore, it seems urgent to raise the question: What seeds do we want in the future? Patented seeds, edited seeds, certified seeds, farm seeds, peasant seeds, participatory seeds? It’s time to decide! And time to precise the words in legal texts.
Highlights
The day where seeds were considered “material” in legal text was a decisive moment
France, inspired by the Czechoslovak law[1], was one of the first countries to establish by decree, in 1922, a register of selected plants and to set up a seed control committee
The term material is used 11 times: 5 in the article 5 concerning rights protected and scope of protection “The effect of the right granted to the breeder of a new plant variety [ ...] is that his prior authorization shall be required for the production, for purposes of commercial marketing, of the reproductive or vegetative propagating material, as such, of the new variety, and for the offering for sale or marketing of such material
Summary
Throughout the European Union, regulation (EC) No 834/2007 specified all the rules to be followed concerning the production, processing, distribution, import, control, and labelling of organic products In this text, 35 occurrences of the word material are found, essentially “feed material” and “vegetative propagating material”. According to the article 3–18: “organic heterogeneous material means a plant grouping within a single botanical taxon of the lowest known rank which: (a) presents common phenotypic characteristics; (b) is characterized by a high level of genetic and phenotypic diversity between individual reproductive units, so that plant grouping is represented by the material as a whole, and not by a small number of units; (c) is not a variety within the meaning of Article 5 of Council Regulation (EC)N°2100/94; (d) is not a mixture of varieties; and (e) has been produced in accordance with this Regulation” This regulation 2018/848 will come into force in January 2021
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