The European Union has reprimanded Denmark for not preventing local companies from labelling their cheese as ‘feta cheese’. Feta Cheese is a crumbly Greek cheese that is made from sheep and goat milk, it was designated as traditional Greek product in 2002, and in 2005 the EU court ruled that only Greece based producers had the protected legal right of labelling their cheese as ‘feta’.
Danish hard cheese has been sold for the past 60 years with the ‘feta label’, but after the exclusivity was granted to Greece by the EU Denmark “failed to fulfill its obligations under EU law” as it did not prevent local companies from using the ‘feta’ label.
The court ruling is also based in a 2019 lawsuit from the European Commission against Danish feta brought by Greece and Cyprus. The Commission concluded that Denmark was violating the EU’s protected designation of origin status feta. This also puts a full stop to any export of feta cheese other than protected legal producers.
People in Greece have welcomed this decision, Christos Apostolopoulos the head of Association of Greek Dairy Industries is extremely pleased with the decision and commented that their “complaints have finally been heard”.
Greek cheesemakers claim that they have history on their side, with the first record of feta cheese being recorded in the eighth century BC. The cheese is an integral part of the Hellenic cuisine and has been found its way into many other cultures and cuisines.
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