Danes cheesed off at EU feta protection - Food Industry Report

Eurofood, Nov 7, 2002

The recent decision to award EU protection to the traditionally Greek product of feta has caused outrage in Denmark, which produces 25 000 tonnes of feta each year, mostly for export to the Middle Eastern market. In previous years, output has been in excess of 100 000t.

Under the new laws, only cheese produced from ewe's milk in certain regions of Greece will be allowed to be described as feta. Manufacturers in other countries have been given five years in which to develop alternative marketing labels for products currently sold as feta. The Danish dairy association has promised to challenge the EU's verdict in the European Court of Justice. "The Commission's decision is unjust and unreasonable," declared the association's head of milk policy, Keld Winther Rasmussen. "If we start protecting all the names of cheeses, we [the European dairy industry] will end up being unable to produce practically anything," he claimed.

"For us, it's a question of principle [...] Greece can't assume the exclusive right to the name feta which is not even Greek, but Italian!"

EARLIER RULING OVERTURNED

An earlier decision by the Commission to ban non-Greek feta, passed in 1996, was partially overturned by a Court of Justice ruling in 1999.

But the Commission is now claiming that as non-Greek feta is often produced with cow's milk rather than goat's milk, selling such product under the name feta would thus be likely to mislead consumers.

The Commission has placed great store by the protection of traditional regional products under the PDO and PGI registers, regarding the scheme as a way of promoting the development of local quality foods. But cheese names such as Cheddar and Camembert are generally regarded as generic terms which are no longer intrinsically linked to their historical region of origin.