Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Breaking News
Early this morning at Schiphol, Amsterdam's International Airport, as well as other major European airports such as Madrid and Lisbon were raided by customs agents with warrants to confiscate any and all roses grown without royalty payments. These royalty payments are due to the rose breeders for their intellectual property (the development and rights to a variety of rose that they developed) which are assessed on every plant grown. Rose plants are easily propagated and there is a considerable black market for 'hot" new varieties.This abuse has been going on for far too long, and for a company such as Mayesh which does business with reputable rose growers, the implication is that hopefully we will have to compete less with brokers and importers who trade with illegal operators, as they will either have to pay some quite large sums pending an audit going back several years, or simply cease to be growers.
I support these actions and earnestly hope similar actions will take place in the United States.
Please be sure that we do everything in our power to deal with upstanding and fully paid-up members of the rose growing community, but if we do find we have been trading erroneously with a grower who is in violation of the law, we will shall correct the situation immediately.
Just to give you an idea of the impact; today I had lunch with another importer from Holland who received a call from a grower to inform him that unfortunately the shipment of Sexy Red would have to cancelled as the grower had not paid the royalties for this new variety!
# posted by Mayesh International @ 3:39 PM 
