06/10/2013, 23:56

Dear supporter of the petition „Diversidade das sementes em risco!“

Thank you for supporting our petition! Six weeks ago it went online, and in total, in more than 15 languages, we now have over 45.000 signatures from all over Europe and beyond. For different languages see www.seed-sovereignty.org/EN/

What happened in the last few weeks?

On Monday the 6th of May, the EU Commission approved a propoosal of the Plant Reproductive Material (PRM) marketing regulation, based on an earlier Nov 2012 draft criticized by our petition. The proposal however includes a provision for „niche“ varieties, and this is only due to the pressures collectively put on the politicians.

There are a number of criticisms of this proposal, see for example the press release of “Arche Noah” (Noah's ark) ( www.saatgutkampagne.org/130507_press_release_Arche_Noah.PDF and the press release of the German umbrella organisation for crop and livestock biodiversity, "Seed that can be saved is disappearing from the market" www.kulturpflanzen-nutztiervielfalt.org/seed-can-be-saved-disappearing-market .

The demands of our petition stand, and will now be directed to the members of the EU Parliament and EU Council of Ministers.

Ahead of the vote on 6 May, six commissioners were informed about the petition as well as the current number of signatures on each of the languages. We demanded they reject the regulation, but it passed regardless.

It is now important to emphasize the demands that a new EU seed regulation must create the right conditions for seeds of diversity, farm bred varieties and varieties uniquely suited for organic culture by virtue of their genetic diversity.

In the coming weeks and months we will count on your help for this, as we talk to member of the EU Parliament and/or stand up in other ways politically for our demands. From 15 to 19 July the MEPs have their „constituency weeks”, cf www.europarl.europa.eu/pdf/general/cal2013.pdf . For external parliamentary activities they should be in their home countries. Maybe you would like to try to organize discussions with them on the seed issue? This would be very important, if they are members or vice-chairs of the AGRI or the ENVI committee!

Unfortunately we didn't manage to translate this message into Portuguese – if you could do so, this would be very helpful. In this case, please send the text to info@seed-sovereignty.org

Sincerely,
Andreas Riekeberg

Campaign for Seed-Sovereignty
www.seed-sovereignty.org/PT/index.html

P.S.: The petition can be signed at tinyurl.com/diversidade-das-sementes