Brussels, 17/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - French and Danish feta producers have asked their governments to lodge a complaint with the Court of Justice to cancel the regulation reserving the label of "feta" to a single cheese produced in some regions in Greece (see EUROPE 16 October p 15).
Jacques Bernat, President of the inter-professional group of milk and French roquefort and feta cheese producers, explained that they were going to intensely lobby the French government. He also pointed out that their manufacturing method was the same as that in Greece (a sheep cheese preserved in brine). He considered that a solution would be to recognise the Greek feta cheese label, on the condition that they could have a generic sheep's milk feta label in their countries. The French inter-professional group regrets that France abstained during the Agriculture Council in June and left the way free for the Commission. It has declared that if action is not forthcoming then as a last resort, French producers could support the approach of North European countries which produce cow's milk feta.
A few days earlier, the Danish Milk Products Association said that it was prepared to go to Court to get the Commission's decision cancelled, which it believes its "unjust and unreasonable" and which could harm other kinds of cheese like camembert, gouda and brie made in other countries. This is the gist of the declaration made by Keld Winther Rasmussen, Head of the Association's milk policy section, who also added that they considered it as a matter of principle that Greece could not exclusively assume the right to the word feta, which is not even Greek but Italian!
The Danish produce some 25,000 tonnes of feta annually, mostly for export. Feta production had reached a record level of 112,000 tonnes in 1993, 90,000 tonnes of which had been exported to Iran, before falling dramatically in 1997 (because of the unfavourable trading conditions granted by the State of Iran and reductions in export refunds).
The European Commission adopted a regulation registering the Greek cheese "feta" as a protected name of origin (AOP). Since then, feta, made from ewes' milk, can only be produced in certain regions of Greece and in compliance with stringent manufacturing rules, states the regulation, which announces that the producers of other Member States, or those that do not respect these specifications, have five years in which to modify the name of their cheese or stop production.