Agency seeks to align seed rules with national standard, add distributor registration and enforceable reporting

Stephanie Smith, deputy director of the Plant Industry Division at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, described changes to the state’s seed‑law provisions intended to harmonize state definitions with the Recommended Uniform State Seed Law (RUSLE) and to sharpen distributor registration and reporting requirements.

Smith said the agency does not register individual seed products or routinely review product labels, but it does register businesses that distribute seed and responds to labeling complaints. "We don't register individual seed products. We don't review labels for seed products... We register the folks that distribute those products," she said.

Under the proposed changes, the agency will add a defined term for "distributor" and rename a prior "inspection fee" as a registration fee for seed distributors. Smith told the committee that a seller must be registered in Vermont and that the registration fee is $85; she also said additional tonnage fees apply when containers exceed 10 pounds.

The proposal adds reporting requirements about seed treatments and associated EPA registration numbers and makes it an enforceable offense to fail to report sales data, including reporting zero sales. Smith said the agency publishes a seed report on its website using collected information and that enforceable reporting improves the state's ability to know whether products were sold or not.

A committee question asked whether the new definition on page 29 (line 17) was new; Smith said the definition is drawn from RUSLE and that using RUSLE helps keep Vermont's definitions consistent with other states. She cited New York as an example of a state that uses the same national definitions.

The committee did not take a formal vote on these changes during the meeting; Smith encouraged members to attend an agricultural producer event that evening.