Ottawa, Canada
December 23, 2004
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Factsheet
Farmers Ability
to Save Seed Produced from Protected Varieties
The Canadian Food Inspection
Agency is responsible for administering the
Plant Breeders’ Rights Act (
http://laws.justice.gc.ca./en/P-14.6/fulltoc.html) and the
Seeds Act
(http://laws.justice.gc.ca./en/S-8/index.html).
Plant Breeders’ Rights Act
Canada’s
PBR (PBR)
system provides plant breeders with exclusive rights to produce
in Canada for the purpose of sale and selling, propagating
material of varieties (known as ‘seed’ for purposes of this
document). PBR
is a voluntary system in that plant breeders are not required to
use the PBR
system. Canada’s present legislation is in compliance with the
1978 Convention of the International Union for the Protection of
New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).
A variety that has been granted
rights under the PBR
Act is known as a protected variety. The current
PBR Act
does not prevent plant breeders from using a protected variety
for further plant breeding nor does it prohibit farmers from
producing and using seed of a protected variety.
The current Act does not,
however, allow farmers to sell seed produced from a protected
variety without the authorization of the holder of the plant
breeders’ right.
Under the existing legislation,
‘propagating material’ applies to all seed (both pedigreed and
non-pedigreed or common seed).
If Canada
amends its PBR
legislation to bring it into compliance with the 1991
UPOV Convention, this will provide the
opportunity for Canada to provide clarity to the legislation.
Clarifying the legislation
would involve explicitly spelling out in the
PBR Act
that farmers could save seed produced from a protected variety
and use it on their own farms (commonly referred to as farmer’s
privilege). As with the existing legislation it would not,
however, exempt farmers from obtaining authorization from the
holder of the right before they sell seed produced from a
protected variety as common seed for planting.
Seeds Act
The Seeds Act
regulates the importing, exporting, advertising, packaging,
labelling and selling of seed in Canada. The issue of whether
seed is pedigreed versus non pedigreed (common) has no bearing
on whether seed may be considered to be a variety.
Under the Seeds Regulations
though, for certain crop kinds, there are restrictions which
only allow for the advertising and labelling of packages with
the name of the variety if the seed is pedigreed. (See
subsection 10(3) and Schedule II of the
Seeds Regulations). The main difference between
pedigreed and non pedigreed (common) seed is that pedigreed seed
is produced using a third party inspection system (crop/seed
certification) and has higher mechanical purity (i.e.
less weed seeds) than non pedigreed seed.
For more information visit the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency website at www.inspection.gc.ca
P0396-04
December 2004 |
