Effective 28 Aug 1995

266.091. Director of agriculture to enforce provisions and requirements — rules and regulations to be adopted, procedure — laboratory — cooperation with others. — 1. The duty of enforcing sections 266.011 to 266.111 and carrying out its provisions and requirements shall be vested in the director of the department of agriculture. It shall be the duty of the director, individually, or through his authorized agents:

(1) To sample, inspect, make analysis of, and test agricultural and vegetable seeds transported, sold or offered or exposed for sale within this state for seeding purposes, at such time and place and to such extent as he deems necessary to determine whether the agricultural or vegetable seeds are in compliance with the provisions of sections 266.011 to 266.111, and to notify promptly the person who transported, sold, offered or exposed the seed for sale, of any violation;

(2) To adopt, after a public hearing, such reasonable rules and regulations necessary to secure the efficient enforcement of sections 266.011 to 266.111, including the promulgation of definitions of terms relating to the enforcement of this law;

(3) To follow the established rules and methods on analysis as practiced by the Association of Official Seed Analysts and recognized by the seed testing laboratories of the United States Department of Agriculture;

(4) To use tolerances, on pure seed, germination, weed seed and other crop as published in the rules for seed testing by the Association of Official Seed Analysts when taking regulatory action in the administration of this law.

2. Further, for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of sections 266.011 to 266.111, the director of the department of agriculture, individually, or through his authorized agents, is authorized:

(1) To enter upon any public or private premises during the regular business hours in order to have access to seeds subject to the law and the rules thereunder;

(2) To issue and enforce a written or printed "stop-sale" order to the owner or custodian of any lot of agricultural or vegetable seed which the director of the department of agriculture finds is in violation of any of the provisions of sections 266.011 to 266.111, which order shall prohibit further sale of the seed until the officer has evidence that the law has been complied with and the owner or custodian shall have the right to take such steps as may be possible to bring the seed into compliance, such as recleaning, retesting, or relabeling. In respect to seeds which have been denied sale as provided in this subdivision, the owner or custodian of such seeds shall have the right of appeal from the order to the circuit court of the county or city in which the seed is found, praying for a judgment as to the justification of the order and for the discharge of the seed from the order prohibiting the sale in accordance with the findings of the court;

(3) To maintain a laboratory with necessary equipment within appropriations, and is authorized to assign any of his employees without additional salary to aid in the administration of sections 266.011 to 266.111, and shall further be required to secure an analyst or analysts and other necessary employees and designate reasonable remuneration therefor, for the proper enforcement and carrying out of the provisions of sections 266.011 to 266.111. It shall be the duty of the director, within his discretion and appropriations, to publish or cause to be published the results of the examinations, analyses and tests of these samples of agricultural seed or mixture of such seed, drawn as provided for in sections 266.011 to 266.111, together with any other information the director may find advisable. If the director publishes the violations of any seedsman he shall publish the violations of all seedsmen over the same period of time;

(4) To consider for regulatory purposes vegetable seed packets containing one pound or less deficient in germination, when by composite testing, a variety of vegetable seed of a single labeler is found deficient in germination. The method used to determine germination deficiency in vegetable seed packets will consist of germination analysis on at least one packet collected from each of ten different distribution points within the state. If five or more packets are found deficient in germination, that variety, or lot if distinguished by lot numbers, for that labeler will be considered deficient. A "stop-sale" will be issued on that variety or lot in all distribution points known by the director to be offering the vegetable seed packets for sale, and those places of business and the labeler of the seed will be notified;

(5) To gather information necessary to restrict the sale of uncertified seed sold by variety name when that variety has been granted a certificate of protection under the Plant Variety Protection Act which specifies sale only as a class of certified seed;

(6) To cooperate with, and enter into agreements with, any other agency of this state, the United States Department of Agriculture, and any other state or agency thereof, for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of sections 266.011 to 266.111, and securing uniformity of regulations.

3. No rule or portion of a rule promulgated under the authority of sections 266.011 to 266.111 shall become effective unless it has been promulgated pursuant to the provisions of section 536.024.

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(L. 1951 p. 5 § 266.090, A.L. 1957 p. 13, A.L. 1978 H.B. 1634, A.L. 1979 H.B. 57, A.L. 1993 S.B. 52, A.L. 1995 S.B. 3)