Chris, keep posting as you find links, this is a valuable thread for research.
Don't want to derail this thread, as the discussion is already elsewhere in the 2 cents - (New seed laws in the European Union thread), but after reading the above article in genetics, I became interested in who and where this research was being done. Turns out it is connected to Wageningen UR in the Netherlands. I went to their website and looked at some of the history of this university, and found they have had a division since 1976 DLO: Establishment of RIKILT, the National Quality Institute for Agricultural and Horticultural Products. The result of a merger of the National Agriculture Testing Station in Maastricht and the National Dairy Station in Leide. One thought jumped to another, and now I am wondering if politicians who enacted the restrictive seeds laws were pushed/advised to do so by legitimate university administration/researchers who are ultimately backed by money from large corporations. Looking at their financial figures, they get huge chunks of money from "contract research", especially in the Specialised Research Institutes section. I guess it should be a surprise to no one then, that EU government policy could be influenced by university scientists or at least the administrators of the programs, which would bump the visibility of their corporate sponsors down a bit. I have not done enough research (and don't have time to) to see if this is what happened or who the EU bad seed policy advisors were. Just wanted to comment that some of the links posted here continue to bring up interesting side topics and ruminations.
