56 



Mr. Hoinkes. No, Mr. Chairman. Generally, before the adminis- 

 tration would ask the advice and consent of the Senate to ratifica- 

 tion it is the practice that implementing legislation would either be 

 passed or well advanced towards passage, because these treaties 

 are not self-executing. So in order to be able to incur the treaty ob- 

 ligations that ratification implies or carries with it, implementing 

 legislation would have to be passed. 



As a consequence, the first step in the ratification process of 

 treaties of this nature would be the introduction and hopefully en- 

 actment of implementing legislation. This is what we are doing 

 here. 



Senator Kerrey. Do you know the current status of ratification 

 by other countries? Have any countries ratified of the 16 that have 

 signed the treaty? 



Mr. Hoinkes. It is my understanding, Mr. Chairman, that no 

 country at this point has ratified the convention. 



In Europe, for instance, that is largely due to the fact that the 

 European Economic Community also has under consideration a 

 regulation on community plant variety rights that may have been 

 finalized by now, and that is supposed to go hand-in-hand with 

 UPOV. What these countries want to do is to adopt their laws so 

 that they would be consistent both with the European Community 

 plant variety rights regulation and with UPOV. So it is just a 

 matter of time until the EC would fall into place as far as adoption 

 of the UPOV Convention is concerned. 



Other countries are, we have been told, well under way, either in 

 also drafting legislation, or already having submitted legislation to 

 their respective parliaments, but as of this date we_ are not aware 

 that any country has ratified. But this is just a matter of time. 



Senator Kerrey. Mr. Latham, did you want to make some com- 

 ments? 



Mr. Latham. Mr. Chairman, in the summer of 1991, I had the 

 opportunity to travel to China on behalf of the Iowa and Illinois 

 Soybean Promotion Boards, the check-off boards, accompanied by 

 individuals from the ag experiment stations at Iowa State Universi- 

 ty and the University of Illinois for the expressed purpose of trying 

 to acquire soybean germplasm from China that has up until this 

 time been unavailable to us, even though USDA and others, includ- 

 ing ourselves, had made extensive efforts to do that. 



The entire rest of the world, at least the estimates we were 

 given, the entire rest of the world in total germplasm collections 

 has about 11,000 accessions of soybeans. I am not calling them vari- 

 eties, but accessions of soybeans. The Chinese, by their own esti- 

 mates, have about 22,000 accessions, of which 17,000 are the gly- 

 cine max or the commercial or commonly cultivated cultivars, and 

 about 5,000 are the glycine soya, or the wild soybeans. U.S. scien- 

 tists believe that we may have the best opportunity for genetic di- 

 versity in the wild soybeans. 



The Chinese invited us to come. They want to work with us and 

 we are working with them to acquire some of the germplasm that 

 will come to the U.S. germplasm collection, the repository in Illi- 

 nois, and USDA's collection, and we are continuing that relation- 

 ship. 



