members to request a declaration of lawful acquirement or prior informed consent (as required by the Convention on Biological Diversity) as precondition for granting PVP. The documentation of a case in West Africa shows that the risk of biopiracy is real: A French seed company tempted to claim plant variety protection for the traditional onion variety “Violette de Galmi”. The claim was challenged by the Nigerien government, the seed company withdrew the application and submitted a new application for the same variety but under another name. The fact that challenging the application was only possible because the seed company used the original name of the traditional variety shows how easily varieties can be appropriated. Critics and resistance However, several Social movements and civil society organisations such as Oxfam, Third World Network and Via Campesina have pointed out the resistance of the UPOV Secretariat and Member States to dialogue with all interested parties, in particular: by keeping meetings secret, by not making its documents publicly available, by refusing farmers' organisations NGO observer status with UPOV. A recent study by Professor Graham Dutfield concluded that UPOV's governance falls short in many different ways, UPOV officials know very little about actual farming, and how small-scale farmers actually develop new varieties and produce them, and that they knew much more about breeding, which favours commercial breeders. The UPOV system thus favours commercial breeders over farmers and producers, and private interests over public interests. See also Internal links Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001 "Plant variety" (the legal term) vs. "variety" (the botanical taxonomy term) International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Plant Treaty, or ITPGRFA) Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Use (Nagoya Protocol) United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) Bioprospecting and biopiracy Plant genetic resources (PGR) World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) External links List of UPOV members, with date of accession and respective act of the convention to which it is party Association for Plant Breeding for the Benefit of Society (APBREBES), civil society organisation with observer status to UPOV SWISSAID Foundation Notes and references Bioethics Botany Plant genetics Commercialization of traditional medicines Biological patent law Intellectual property organizations Intergovernmental organizations established by treaty Organizations established