The agricultural organizations PEK and Nea Agrotiki Kinisi express their complete opposition to the new decree of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment that provides for the further reduction of the participation of goat and sheep milk for PDO halloumi, noting that it constitutes a "regression".
As they state in their joint statement, such regressions endanger an "extremely important conquest for the place", for which successive governments and all the bodies involved fought for almost two decades and managed to succeed, despite the various problems and the occasional objections and "expediencies" that were raised.
The years-long linking of the standard for the production of PDO Halloumi with the currently available quantities of goat and sheep milk is a wrong practice, which does not serve the well-intentioned interests of Cyprus, they note, adding that this tactic "exposes us at a pan-European level and jeopardizes our success in recognizing our unique product as a PDO. Finally, this process of product overflow, which unfortunately continues today, must be stopped, so that the PDO is not lost and halloumi becomes a generic, i.e. general product."
The two organizations note that the continuation of this tactic during the transitional period will ultimately lead to the loss of the registration of the Protected Designation of Origin in 2029, with all the negative consequences for Cyprus.
"We consider it more appropriate to take advantage of the new five-year transitional period granted by the EU and to proceed with a steady and equal annual increase in the percentage of participation of goat and sheep milk in the production of PDO halloumi, in order to smoothly reach full implementation of the approved and protected standard at the end of the transitional period in 2029," they state, adding that while with the recent agreement to increase the quota to 30% "we believed that it would lead in this direction, we suddenly found ourselves in this setback."
PEK and Nea Agrotiki Kinisi state that they understand the concerns about the reduction in the production and exports of PDO halloumi, but they believe that a smooth transition is preferable to facing the loss of halloumi's recognition as a PDO in 2029. They also add that they consider it “improbable, if not impossible, to achieve within 4 years the increase in the amount of goat and sheep milk available for the production of halloumi to a degree that covers the enormous amount of cow's milk so that we can meet the approved standard”.
Finally, the two organizations welcome the measures announced by the government for the development of goat and sheep farming in Cyprus with the aim of increasing the production of goat and sheep milk and note that such measures should have been taken and announced a decade ago.
Source: KYPE
