Save Our Seeds

[Guy]

Hi

As some of you will already know the association Kokopelli - formerly Terres et Semences - based in Ales in the south of France, has been taken to court for distributing seeds that do not appear on the EU and French allowed seeds lists.

The pepper seeds allowed for sale/exchange and sowing/growing in France and Europe are highly regulated and largely dominated by F1 hybrids. You may not be aware of this, but we are not really allowed to exchange or grow the vast majority of the varieties that we grow or would like to!

Anyway, Kokopelli have been campaigning for years to preserve the wealth and diversity of seed stocks of a wide range of garden vegatables (including a lot of chiles). They also sell a superb range of uncommon and traditional vegetable varieties, that do not appear on the official lists and in conjunction with a network of happy gardeners, seek to preserve and protect such varieties, that as a consequence of legislation risk disappearance.

Recently another seed selling firm in France (Baumaux Graines) has attacked Kokopelli in court, for their sales of non authorised seeds. Their action and the current legislation in this area threaten to have huge consequences for biodiversity and the future supply of seeds and veg for all of us.

So Kokopelli have started a petition that will be used in their defence and to demand changes to the ways in which varieties are chosen for inclusion on the lists. At present registration of a variety is very expensive and only really affordable for large commercial seed suppliers, who as a consequence, corner the market even futher with mainly hybrids and even the odd dreaded GM seeds.

I feel that things really need to change in this field and felt that it would be useful to bring to your attention the situation and provide a link to the petition and the background info on the trial....unfortunately the pages about the trial and the petition are only available in french....but a some background info on the activities of this association are available on the english version of the site...which is under construction.

If, like me you feel it is important to protect

1) Our right to grow the varieties that we want to.

2) The genetic heritage of the richly diverse plants, we humans have adapted and bred to feed ourselves.

Please take the time to look at the petition and sign it.

The court case (french) http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr/actu/new_news.cgi?id_news=57

The Petition - Free the Seed(french)
http://www.univers-nature.com/signez/?code=cat

Kokopelli in English
http://www.kokopelli-seeds.com/

Sorry for ranting, but I feel this is important...

All the best

Guy

[Anonymous]

Sending you a virtual high-5 for posting this!

Jennifer

[Nike]

Sounds pretty unbelievable! Thanks for posting.