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als come back in their country, I think they believe that the people 

 who will most benefit from plant breeders' rights are the compa- 

 nies, the breeders themselves who have made improvements. There 

 is no question about that. 



Senator Kerrey. Nor objection, necessarily? 



Ms. Shand. I think there is an objection, because they don't see 

 that there has been any adequate compensation made for the origi- 

 nal materials that came oftentimes from developing countries. 



Senator Kerrey. But it seems to me that the company and the 

 country should negotiate what that compensation is going to be. 



Ms. Shand. That is possible, although there are multilateral ne- 

 gotiations underway now. One of these is in the biodiversity con- 

 vention, but this has yet to be determined. 



Senator Kerrey. The position of the American Farm Bureau is 

 that the treaty should be ratified with changes dealing with inci- 

 dental sales, essentially? 



Mr. Neidig. Yes sir. That is the basic thrust. We talked about 

 some other things. Of course, our farm members are concerned 

 with that farmer position, saved seed, incidental sales, the right to 

 do that. 



Senator Kerrey. Mr. Robinson, are you moving to the micro- 

 phone there? 



Mr. Robinson. Yes sir, Mr. Chairman. May I make a few com- 

 ments on that? 



Senator Kerrey. Yes. 



Mr. Robinson. Thank you. We feel that there must be no provi- 

 sion for sale of a protected variety without permission of the 

 owner. We think this is extremely important for several reasons. 



Number one, because it is needed to comply with the 1991 UPOV 

 Convention. 



Number two, because there are certain crops, celery, okra, pep- 

 pers, lettuce, where the market size is fairly small and yet the 

 growers are large enough, given that opportunity of incidental 

 sales, it would have an extremely detrimental effect on those mar- 

 kets. 



Number three, no other form of intellectual property rights pro- 

 vides the ability to sell the protected invention, and why should 

 PVPA be any different? 



We have protected the practice of planting farm-saved seed on 

 one's own holding. This is competition to the breeder. It does have 

 an influence in terms of limiting the price somewhat. On the other 

 hand, we feel that in fair exchange for that, because we do recog- 

 nize this practice, that there should be some risk in terms of treat- 

 ed seed, which we think is more of an exception that would be 

 borne by the farmer who uses his farm-saved seed without any 

 kind of compensation to the breeder. 



And I think last, once we introduce any kind of incidental sale or 

 right of sale, we create a gray area, and the gray area, I think, will 

 promote more litigation and more conflicts between us and our cus- 

 tomers, and we certainly aren't interested in that and I don't be- 

 lieve Farm Bureau is either. 



Mr. Neidig. If I might respond to that, in agreement partially 

 with what Mr. Robinson is saying, yes, and I think, if you recall, I 

 read in my testimony that we asked for clarification of what inci- 



