The Board of Directors Meeting will be February 22-23 in Bozeman. Please contact the office or your Board Member if you have any questions or comments.

Muddled musings from an old Seed Certification Manager… Ron Larson

Amazingly, it is time to construe some more thoughts for a newsletter. As I have counted, this is Christmas letter number 20 that this manager has been involved with since being hired. As always, we are hoping that the information supplied will be useful to the program and to each grower and contractor as they endeavor to partake of the value-added benefits of certified seed (and we really hope people will take time to read it). To begin, I would like to review some information about labeling, and specifically, labeling of bulk clean seed. Let me start with the legal aspects of proper labeling (hopefully to minimize the possibility of
thinking that Larson is simply on a power trip). The Montana State Seed Law states that all seed whether in bulk or bag must be labeled with the appropriate lot number, purity and germination information. This information is also required by the Federal Seed Act. AOSCA (Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies) standards call for specific agency labeling of all certified classes of seed sold. Since the official
agency for this labeling in Montana is MSGA, we provide the numbered stick-on tags designed for that process. So, every lot of bulk seed sold should have one of these tags included with the sale, along with the laboratory analysis information, the certification number and the weight of the lot being sold (This includes every sale, and there should be no exceptions). Seed that is sold without this information would in most cases be considered non-certified in a court of law, thereby creating another liability problem if the seed is Plant Variety Protected (PVP). It should be noted that there could be a few of the old style 3 part paper certificates in the works yet, but we are moving toward the new style with any seed dealer who sells more than a few lots of seed annually.
If a lot of seed is offered by a seed dealer on a wholesale basis, the “For Resale” square is to be designated on the label. The final retail sales resulting from this sale should indicate they are “Not For Resale”, and as such, a separate Bulk Certificate should be offered with each final sale. When we receive our e-mailed reports on Bulk Certificates used in the office they should provide the complete sales path of any lot of seed sold. This then completes the “Bulk Labeling” process. It sounds simple and we hope you find it so.