b'investigation of Kentucky 31 in Oregon, where mislabeling and misrepresentation of the variety has been found.Kentucky 31 is a publicly available variety of tall fescue that is widely grown, says Savory. At one point in time, it was the most widely used fesue variety in United States seed production. Kentucky 31 occurs in both Oregon and Missouri.From 2015 to 2017, Savory notes that there was a production shortage of Kentucky 31 in Missouri, however, Kentucky 31 seed remained high. This ultimately led to some instances of mislabeling and misrepresentation of other tall fescue varieties as Kentucky 31, which is a violation of both the Federal Seed Act and Oregon seed laws, she says. It was in 2018 when the Oregon Department of Agriculture began an investigation into Kentucky 31 to address industry con-cerns. According to Savory, the goal was to get a clear picture of the quantities of Kentucky 31 bought and sold in Oregon.Allen tracks that the Kentucky 31 mislabeling began being notified This started out as a broad investigation, Savory says. Recordsto the USDA in 2016.requests were sent to 214 licensed wholesale dealers, requesting all records for any Kentucky 31 seed bought or sold in 2016 and 2017.31, she says. The civil penalty included 124 violations of Oregon By June, nearly all dealers had responded to the request. state law.From there, the department followed up on their receivedThe investigation is still ongoing, and new violations are being data and performed additional investigations, which includeddiscovered. additional record requests, warehouse visits, visits with growersThe department continued to work on this case through the and collecting samples for sending to the USDA. From there, inrest of 2019 and into 2020, Savory says. In June of 2020, an 2019, civil penalties were issued to two entities, a seed dealer andamendment to the original notice of civil penalty was issued. The their owner operator, which totaled $248,000.department identified 45 additional lots that were misrepresented. The investigation determined that nearly seven millionEighty-three additional violations brought the total number of lots pounds of Oregon grass seed had been mislabeled as Kentuckyto 154, or approximately 8.5 million pounds of seed.22/ SEEDWORLD.COMJANUARY 2021'