Disagreement over milk sees halloumi application withdrawn

CYPRUS has withdrawn its application to register halloumi as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), after dairy producers failed to see eye to eye on the milk quantities for the prototype.

Cleary deflated, Agriculture Minister Sophocles Aletraris yesterday said Cyprus was now in serious danger of missing out and the cheese being registered by another state, with all the economic consequences this would entail.

The minister, who met the Cyprus Dairy Products Manufacturers Association earlier in the day, said cow and goat milk producers had asked for the application to be withdrawn after failing to agree on the percentages of milk that should be used to manufacture the local cheese.

“It seems we didn’t convince the association about the damage Cyprus would suffer over the registration of halloumi and the dangers behind withdrawing our application, if halloumi is named by someone else as a PDO,” said Aletraris.

But he added that the manufactures insisted on the withdrawal. “We are obliged, as the relevant authority, to withdraw it and see what actions we will take next,” Aletraris said.

Goat and sheep farmers yesterday cut off traffic on the Kiti-Mazotos-Zygi road for half an hour, to protest the government’s lack of interest in the problems their sector is suffering.

Among their gripes were the massive increases in the price of animal feed, which farmers said was leading their profession to extinction.

“This is a class of producers that has been suffering many problems for a long time now,” Aletraris said yesterday.

He conceded that the animal feed was indeed very costly, but he attributed this to international price increases.

“We are trying to prepare a scheme to reinforce goat and sheep farmers, but first we are trying to convince them to form groups, so that they can strengthen their negotiating position,” said Aletraris.

Goat farmers have been up in arms over the dairy industries’ refusal to comply with the halloumi prototype, which says that 51 per cent of the local cheese should be manufactured with goat milk.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.