Cyprus’ battle to keep Halloumi ours stumbles over the humble cow
FORMER FRENCH President Charles de Gaulle once famously asked how anyone can be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheeses, presumably referring to the fractious and conflicting makeup of the French people.
Cyprus may be known for only one cheese – halloumi – but the recent impasse with the efforts, or lack thereof, to register halloumi in the EU as a uniquely Cypriot product suggest that there are plenty of money, politics, conflicting values and vested interests to be found even within a one-cheese nation.
By registering any agricultural product as a PDO (protected designation of origin), a country has exclusive rights to the name, which then protects the traditional good by preventing foreign competition from using the same name. PDO registration also ensures that the good fetches high prices, especially when the name is as widely recognised as ‘feta’ or, to a lesser extent, ‘halloumi’.
Greece, for example, has 20 cheeses registered as PDO within the European Union, including the renowned Feta as well as lesser-known cheeses like Sfela, Xynomyzithra Kritis, and Batzos. No other EU country is entitled to use those names.
The process to register any agricultural product as a PDO (protected designation of origin) within the European Union is straightforward. An individual or group submits an application for the product to the Registrar and Official Receiver, which then forward it to the appropriate committee.
If the committee accepts the application, it is then published in the government gazette for a three-month period for objections. If the committee agrees with the objections, the application is dropped; if not, it goes to the EU for the same objection period process and then is registered as a PDO.
Halloumi is presently registered as a protected Cypriot product within the US but not the EU.
So why has Cyprus not yet tried to register the name halloumi in the EU? Or rather, why hasn’t the government yet examined and published the two halloumi applications that have been for months in its possession: one from the Cyprus Cheese Makers Association and the other from the Association of Sheep and Goat Farmers?
The delay and government inaction seem to come down to something as simple as whether or not the registered halloumi will contain cow’s milk. This detail, while seemingly trivial, may in fact prove critical to the future security and viability of halloumi production in Cyprus.
The reason the ‘cow milk issue’ is so contentious harkens back to a court battle between the Danish Dairy Board and the Trade Ministry of Cyprus. The case came a year after halloumi’s April 10, 1990 registration on the US Principal Register as a cheese product “produced only in Cyprus using [the] historic method unique to that country.”
One year later – on April 24, 1999 – the Danish Dairy Board filed a petition to cancel the registration, claiming that ‘halloumi’ was only a generic name for a type of cheese also produced in the Middle East, Greece, Turkey, Australia and Denmark, that non-Cypriot halloumi had been exported to the US since 1982, and that the registration had been acquired deceptively.
On August 11, 1999, after years of US court proceedings, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board rejected the Danish petition. The following August the Patent and Trademark Office granted a renewal of the halloumi mark for another 10-year period.
In its statement, the court said that in the “traditional Cypriot process” the cheese is “made exclusively from sheep’s milk or goat’s milk” unlike the cow’s milk halloumi that had previously been produced in Denmark.
Veterinarian and consultant to around 30 sheep and goat farmers Loizos Michael told the Sunday Mail that by including cow’s milk in the halloumi application to the EU, the government would in effect be shooting itself in the foot.
“The court ruled that only in Cyprus can halloumi be made, and only by sheep and goat’s milk. So how can the Trade Ministry now go to Europe and say ‘no’ it’s with cow’s milk? Isn’t Denmark going to laugh?”
“Also we will have major problems with the American government for having tricked her,” Michael said.
Michael threw down a stack of old postcards on the table showing sheep and goats grazing against a backdrop of olive and carob trees. “This is tradition. That’s what it means.”
In 1988 the number of dairy farms numbered about 878, but as the farms grew larger they concentrated in number. There are now about 275 dairy farms on the island, many of them major industrial farms.
Council Regulation 2081/92 on the designations of origin for agricultural products recommends the promotion of those products that would benefit “the rural economy, in particular to less favoured or remote areas”.
Sheep and goat farmers who fall under the category ‘less favoured or remote areas’ argue that the government is siding for financial reasons with the larger and more powerful dairy farmers, in effect helping the privileged by using a law created to support the underprivileged.
The resolution further states that for a product to be eligible for a PDO, the product specification must include “the authentic and unvarying local methods” for making the product.
In the book Milk and the Dairy products of Cyprus, published by the Organisation of the Cyprus Dairy Industry, Sotiris Economides writes that the “traditional cheese of Cyprus has been produced for centuries now from sheep or goat milk, or a mixture of both”.
An official in the Agriculture Ministry who preferred to remain anonymous told the Sunday Mail that any halloumi applications for PDO are still at the Office of the Registrar and Official Receiver and that it remains unclear when they will be published for objections, attributing the delay to “legal issues”.
When asked whether the official believed that halloumi was traditionally made with cow’s milk, the official replied: “It depends. Some could say that it has not yet become a tradition; others could say that it has become a tradition already.”
The official further said that they were “bound to follow the industrial standard in place since 1984”, which allows cow milk in halloumi.
The government has not explained, however, how the industrial standard, which was formed in 1984 and the PDO registration, which has to do with traditional methods of production, bear any relation upon one another.
One possible reason why the government has not yet published any of the halloumi applications is that the government is aware that if the dairy farmers application makes it to the EU objection level, the sheep and goat farmers could still object by citing the government’s position in the US where it defended halloumi as a sheep and goat product. The government would then risk losing the halloumi name.
On the other hand if the government publishes the sheep and goat farmers’ application, any objections will likely not hold up since evidence indicates that halloumi by tradition is an exclusively sheep and goat product. And the acceptance of the goat and sheep farming application passed would offend the powerful dairy industry. The result is continuing delay and impasse.
It is also rarely discussed or acknowledged by the government or press that the sheep and goat farmers even have an application pending on cow-free halloumi.
Chairman of the Pan-Cyprian Cheese Makers Association Athos Pittas told the Sunday Mail that the issue of including or excluding cow’s milk was “not on the table now” and the “only question now is how to proceed with the application”, referring only to the application by the Cheese Makers Association
that allows cow milk.
The Registrar and Official Receiver did not return calls, and the Trade Minister and Agriculture Minister were unavailable for comments.
Managing Director of Christis Dairies Panicos Hadjicostas told the Sunday Mail yesterday that he was very “disappointed with this delay and truly has lost all optimism”, calling the government’s delay “unacceptable.”
Hadjicostas says he supports the inclusion of cow’s milk in halloumi production because halloumi that is limited to sheep and goat’s milk “cannot satisfy year round needs”.
“Are we going to register halloumi to have it for only six or nine months? That’s why we need a small amount of cow’s milk to also be included.”
But the goat and sheep farmers warn that registering the halloumi with cow’s milk carries the risk of losing the halloumi PDO altogether and along with it, the Cyprus halloumi export market.
They also feel that for financial and electioneering purposes, the government is siding with the industrial farmers and by doing so, ignoring the natural advantages that the island has to offer—namely, sheep and goat farming—while promoting a product that Cyprus has an absolute disadvantage in—cow’s milk.
“We have a unique product that we are destroying by mixing it with cow’s milk”, Michael said.
“We are mixing silver with gold to make silver.”
The merchant of Halloumi
Consultant to the sheep and goat farmers Michael Loizos claims that until the founding of the Republic in 1960, the halloumi produced contained no cow’s milk, only sheep and goat milk, and that even during the next two decades cow’s milk was only used for cheese making if in surplus. It wasn’t until the mid 1980s that cow milk was used for halloumi in large quantities.
Athos Pittas of Pittas Dairies, however, claims that cow’s milk was used in halloumi centuries ago, citing a letter in his possession written by a merchant in the 1660’s.
“The first inscription in Latin of the word ‘halloumi’ came in the 1550’s,” Pittas said. “Then in the 1560’s there was a letter sent from someone who came I think from Palestine to Cyprus interested in buying halloumi.”
“In the letter he said that Cyprus cheese was made from three types of milk: sheep, goat and cow. But he didn’t like the cheese, the bastard.”
