KEEPING in line with European Union regulations, Cypriot dairy manufacturers have already begun changing the name of locally produced feta cheese rather than stop production.
“We actually stopped using the name feta about a year ago but no one noticed,” Pittas Dairy Industries co-managing director Athos Pittas told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
“Most consumers carried on buying our product and never bothered with the name.”
The new Pittas feta packaging depicts a picture of the white cheese and is called ‘Pitta’.
Pittas said this was partly aided by the fact that the same font had been used on the new packaging as had been on the old one. Coupled with the fact that some of the letters were there same, and the brand was instantly recognisable, he said.
“You still have to give it a name at some stage because you have to classify it. Pittas applies to all our products including halloumi and anari so you have to describe it. For the time being it is being called a white, brine cheese,” he said.
The dairy industry’s co-managing director said the company was considering giving it a name.
“There are several names under discussion but I wouldn’t like to disclose them just yet,” Pittas said.
The name change is part of a five-year deadline imposed by the European Commission after it was decided in 2002 that the salty, crumbly cheese made from goat and/or sheep milk was a Greek product that can be produced only in certain parts of Greece with specified regulations.
Other nations in the 27-member bloc were given five years to change the name of their “feta” cheese or stop production. The deadline ends on Monday.
Pittas said he did not believe the name change would affect the product’s marketability, despite concerns by other European cheese makers that it would.
When the EU gave feta its protected designation of origin (PDO) in 2002, it argued that natural, geographic and human factors combined to give the cheese its Greek character. It said the extensive grazing of special local ewes and goats on Greek terrain gave the cheese its specific aroma and flavour.
Despite German, Danish, French and British cheese makers’ challenge of Greece’s ownership over the name, the European Court of Justice upheld the Commission’s decision later that year, arguing that several Balkan countries have produced a similar cheese while calling it something other than feta.
“The court upholds the name ‘feta’ as a protected designation of origin for Greece,” it ruled at the time.
The court also reasoned that feta produced outside of Greece often incorporated symbols and references to Greek culture when marketed.
Hence consumers in those member states associated the cheese with Greece even if in reality it was produced elsewhere, the court said.
