French Official Service for Control and Certification of Seeds and Plants (SOC)

It organises the economic and regulatory.phpects of production and sales. It encourages expansion of the industry by making economic studies and carrying out national and international publicity campaigns. Finally it conducts various research and development activities.

As part of this work, one of the tasks of SEMAE is to make proposals to the Ministry of Agriculture for changes in regulations to respond to new expectations of users.

The Ministry of Agriculture adopts regulations for the production of seed potatoes (see: the technical regulation of certification). These regulations must comply with European directives (marketing directive 66/403/CEE, catalogue directive 70/457/CEE and phytosanitary directive 2000/24/CEE). The Ministry entrusts the implementation of these regulations to SEMAE Technical Department, SOC (French Official Service for Control and Certification of Seeds and Plants) which is headed by a civil servant seconded from the Ministry of Agriculture.

A phytosanitary passport must be issued for the sale of seed potatoes within the European Union or a phytosanitary certificate for sales outside Europe. Again it is SOC which acts within the terms of agreements made with the D.G.A.L. / S.P.V.

In order to carry out all the inspection procedures that lead to official certification and to the issuing of passports and phytosanitary certificates, SEMAE and SOC rely on the Fédération Nationale des Producteurs de Plants de Pommes de Terre (National Federation of Seed Potato Growers) (FN3PT) and on its three Regional Growers' Associations (BRETAGNE PLANTS, COMITE NORD, and GROCEP) who provide the necessary staff and infrastructure.

For more information:

For SEMAE, contact section.pommesdeterre@semae.fr

For SOC, contact soc.france@semae.fr