- 2 days ago
Greece produces more authentic feta cheese than any other country. The cheese is so valuable, it's nicknamed "white gold."
But two forces are threatening Greece's historical grip on feta. A pair of diseases has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats. Meanwhile, other countries, including the US, are challenging Greece's legal claim to the name "feta" on the global stage. So what does all this mean for generations-old producers? And what does this mean for the global supply of authentic feta?
But two forces are threatening Greece's historical grip on feta. A pair of diseases has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats. Meanwhile, other countries, including the US, are challenging Greece's legal claim to the name "feta" on the global stage. So what does all this mean for generations-old producers? And what does this mean for the global supply of authentic feta?
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00:00Greece is the world's biggest producer of feta, pumping out 154,000 tons of the cheese in 2025.
00:10Feta brings in roughly a billion dollars a year.
00:13It's so valuable for the country that it's nicknamed white gold.
00:26Normally, the family farms that supply the industry's milk look like this.
00:35But now, many are eerily quiet.
00:39A highly contagious pox outbreak has swept through Greece's herds,
00:44driving up prices of one of the world's most popular cheeses.
00:48And the industry is facing another challenge abroad.
01:01Countries like the U.S. and Turkey are selling their own feta, despite Greece's legal claim to the name.
01:07And the other thing, it's something that's asbestos.
01:11So what does all this conflict mean for Greece's generational cheese producers?
01:15And for that feta on your salad?
01:23Authentic Greek feta is made with sheep's milk.
01:25So it's tangier and crumblier than cheese from cow's milk.
01:28And they're eating, eating, eating, and eating,
01:32with salads, with food, with potatoes, with potatoes,
01:35and even in Greek places.
01:38We use the feta.
01:39It's an advantage of the confidence and the tradition of Greece,
01:45the feta factory.
01:48Alexandros Potos is the second generation owner of Rousas Dairy,
01:51one of the top five feta producers in Greece.
01:59He started his career as an engineer,
02:01but returned to the family business to modernize the cheese making process,
02:05investing 7 million euros in automation.
02:15Cheese curds used to be cut like this, all by hand.
02:30Now, large mechanical knives slice the curds into smaller pieces.
02:35The cheese curds are dumped into molds.
02:37And it's immediately transferred here.
02:40The cheese curds remains for a 24-hour period.
02:43It's the first phase of the Rousas Dairy.
02:45While cheeses like cheddar and parmesan are pressed to remove all the way
02:49and bind the curds,
02:51feta drains only under its own weight.
02:53That gives it the loose, crumbly texture
02:56that allows it to absorb liquid from the brine it's stored in.
03:10That salt will further draw moisture out of the cheese.
03:14There are only a few cheesemakers left in Greece
03:16who age their feta in traditional wooden barrels,
03:19leading to a richer, less salty flavor.
03:22The cheese will be aged for 60 days.
03:26Feta is actually one of the world's oldest cheeses.
03:29A primitive version of it was mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey.
03:33But it wasn't until the 17th century
03:36that Greeks began calling it feta, meaning slice,
03:39likely because of how it's stored in pieces.
03:42By the 20th century,
03:43it had become a staple food for working-class Greeks.
03:46Then, Greeks began immigrating to other countries,
03:49driving demand for feta in new markets,
03:52such as the U.S., Australia, and Germany.
03:55Soon, many countries began making
03:56their own mass-produced versions of feta.
03:59But they didn't have robust sheep and goat dairies,
04:02so they used what they had plenty of — cows.
04:06Cow's milk has less fat and protein than sheep's,
04:09so feta made with it isn't as rich or tangy.
04:12But cows were cheap and abundant,
04:14so their feta was a fraction of the cost.
04:17And consumers gobbled it up.
04:19But the 1990s Mediterranean cuisine
04:21became a popular fad diet in the U.S.
04:24Brands like Afinos and President
04:26cemented Wisconsin as a feta-producing behemoth.
04:30Up against growing competition, Greece fought back,
04:33arguing that these countries' fetas were counterfeit
04:36and eroded Greek heritage.
04:38The legal battle over the name went all the way
04:44in the 1990s.
04:45Denmark, Germany, and France argued that feta had become
04:48a generic term, like cheddar or brie,
04:51and wasn't tied to a geographic location.
04:53It was just a word for crumbly white cheese.
04:56But their argument failed, and in 2002,
05:00the EU granted Greece a protected designation of origin,
05:03or PDO, meaning that all feta in Europe
05:06had to be produced in these regions.
05:09About 200 cheeses in Europe have the same protected status,
05:13like Parmigiano-Reggiano, Brie de Meaux, and Manchego cheese.
05:18It's very important to protect your heritage,
05:21and also centuries of knowledge how to produce food.
05:27That's why we, as Europeans,
05:29we are in favor of protecting our products.
05:33Anastasios Skoras is the third generation in his family
05:36to farm in Thessaly.
05:38The region is responsible for about 45% of the country's feta.
05:44I am a farm farmer from the day I was born.
05:48Authentic feta has to be made mostly from sheep's milk,
05:51with up to 30% goats.
05:54The livestock must graze on local flora.
05:5815% of Greece's plants can't be found anywhere else on Earth.
06:02They're said to give feta its distinctly earthy, peppery flavor.
06:11Since earning protected status in 2002,
06:15Greece's feta production has jumped 21%.
06:18But the battle over the crumbly cheese's name is far from settled.
06:22Outside of the EU, countries get to decide
06:26if they'll honor Greece's PDO for feta.
06:28And major markets like the U.S. and Turkey don't.
06:32They allow their domestic producers to market their own cheese as feta.
06:36In 2025, the Trump administration negotiated trade deals
06:40with Taiwan, Malaysia, and Argentina
06:42that allowed U.S. cheese to use the feta label.
06:46I'm Greek-American, and so I know very well
06:50how important feta is to many people in the U.S.,
06:55and how much they connected to Greece.
06:57This is like, you know, our flagship export,
07:00I think, other than olive oil.
07:02From an economic perspective as well, not just culturally,
07:04it's a really important product.
07:07This growing competition is particularly tough for feta producers
07:11who are already facing the worst animal disease in their lifetimes.
07:15The goat and sheeppox outbreak started in 2024.
07:20Infected sheep can get fevers, red spots, and lesions on their lungs.
07:25Among lambs, it has an 80% mortality rate.
07:35It usually spreads through the air between two close animals,
07:38but it can survive in wool for two months.
07:43Because it spreads so easily, the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food
07:47decided that wherever a case appears, every animal on the farm,
07:52even healthy ones, had to be culled, meaning slaughtered.
07:59Yanis found signs of the disease on his sheep in 2025.
08:04Months later, all of his animals were gone.
08:08Now his farm sits quiet.
08:16It's not easy to have such animals and love you.
08:20You can see that there are people who have a dog
08:23and have a dog.
08:25It's not that now you have such animals.
08:29Here they had the animals.
08:34Here they had the animals.
08:36You can see that there are animals.
08:37You can see that there are animals inside.
08:58The government promised to pay farmers like Yanis up to $288
09:03for each purebred animal lost.
09:05There were huge delays and that even if they did come through,
09:11the amount was not sufficient to make up for what the farmers were losing.
09:39And Yanis wasn't alone in losing everything.
09:43More than 2,600 other farms across Greece have had to be
09:47to cull their herds.
09:50Yeah, there were huge rocks.
09:50The animals were powerful.
09:53Like I said, it was 900.
09:54It was 45,000 euros per month.
10:00It made a cost of 45,000 euros per month.
10:02It was about 330 grams of the wheat meat.
10:03And now it was at 0.
10:06It was really 0.
10:07It's about 0.
10:09And it was about 0.
10:12There were twenty fish that led to death.
10:19We couldn't resist with twenty fish that we lost.
10:24We tried to get more fish because they were big.
10:29In fact, we would make the same and smaller.
10:34Alexandros had to pay ten percent more for the milk he pumped into his Feta factory.
10:38It's very important for the fish. It's very difficult for them.
10:45Some of them, when they saw their animals die, were killed.
10:50It's very important.
10:52Between 2024 and 2025, Greece saw a 17 percent drop in its sheep population.
11:01All together, the government ordered the culling of over 488,000 animals.
11:07No, it didn't have to be good based on us, such as the fish.
11:12We were talking about the first time.
11:15The only one who managed to kill was to kill thousands of sheep.
11:19I'm afraid that every day, we say, what are we going to find?
11:22What are we going to find? If I'm going to find a kruzma?
11:25We don't have to lose our sleep.
11:28The Greek government also enforced strict biosecurity protocols, including sanitation stations and vet deployment.
11:37Anastasios' farm has been under strict lockdown, despite not recording a single case of sheep or goat pox.
11:50He sprays and disinfects throughout the facility.
12:08The government also mandated that animals in afflicted areas were banned from leaving their fences to graze freely outdoors.
12:16So farmers had to feed them commercial grain, which goes against the EU's rules for FETA's PDO.
12:24Nine months after the outbreak, in early 2025, the European Commission determined Greece's efforts hadn't gone far enough.
12:32It urged the Greek government to launch a vaccination campaign.
12:37And Greece is saying, no, thank you.
12:41The Greek government chose not to vaccinate livestock because it risked a temporary ban on dairy exports under EU rules.
12:49While vaccination can save animals, it can make it harder to track the virus.
12:54And with 65 percent of its FETA sold abroad, Greece wasn't willing to take that chance.
12:59There is a real trade cost to vaccinating.
13:04But studies have shown that in the long term, culling can have a greater economic damage than vaccines.
13:10Because then you have to wait for years to replenish a herd.
13:16It got to a point where farmers themselves, who initially did not seem very keen to vaccinate, were essentially begging
13:24Greek authorities for the vaccine.
13:29Greek farmers took to the streets to protest the lack of vaccination, the widespread culling, and delayed payments for their
13:35lost herds.
13:46The economic impact of the pox and culling can't be overstated.
13:50Better production could fall by roughly 11 percent in 2026.
14:00Experts warn that compared to last year, Greece could produce 30,000 fewer tons of milk in 2026.
14:06That could be around 20 percent lower.
14:11Yes, there will be a shortage, but obviously the prices are going to rise as well.
14:19By June, wholesale prices for Greek FETA had already risen to over $11 a kilo.
14:24About 33 percent year on year compared to the same period in 2025.
14:34I have been a kilo feta for about a year.
14:40Around 89, 40, now it has been 12,5, 280, 13 euros.
14:48There is another one here.
14:51Katarina Katsouli has owned Crete, a restaurant in Athens since 1988.
14:57We use a lot of feta.
15:01Me and my family live from this store and many other people.
15:08She normally sources her feta from the island of Lesbos.
15:18She was forced to find new suppliers, which drove up her costs.
15:23An increase she's largely absorbed, rather than passing on to customers.
15:52She still serves feta in baked zucchini and saganaqui, an apple, and a pepper.
15:57appetizer of pan-fried cheese.
16:16This could happen more in the food service sector,
16:20that probably they are using cheaper alternatives.
16:23And particularly now with the cow's milk,
16:25it's significantly cheaper compared to feta prices.
16:29Lately, the sheep and goat pox infection rates
16:31have slowed dramatically in Greece.
16:34The number went from 1,700 outbreaks in 2025
16:37to 131 in the first four months of 2026.
16:41But some experts, like Lydia,
16:43are skeptical that conditions are improving.
16:46Frankly, I don't know that it's working
16:48and I don't necessarily trust
16:52the official figures.
17:08Experts say the damage may outlast the outbreak itself.
17:12The sheep that were cold had been bred for generations.
17:16Their milk was a key ingredient in the distinctive flavor
17:18of authentic Greek feta.
17:20And not only do you lose generations of that work,
17:24but you lose the identity of families,
17:28of villages and of regions.
17:31Suddenly, overnight, you have thousands of farms
17:36that have been put out of operation
17:38because of this disease.
17:40It raises the question,
17:42will other countries move in with their own feta
17:44to fill the gap Greece has left behind?
17:48I will wait until I make a animal.
17:51I will wait until I make a animal.
17:53There is no lack of animal,
17:54because we have invested.
17:56All of our lives have invested in this.
17:59I want to believe that it will continue
18:00and it will continue to continue.
18:04And we will continue to continue.
18:05because after an increase in the future,
18:06we will continue.
18:07so that we will continue to� bouncy.
18:09Also, we will take the type of lift,
18:10which is obviously to the first floor.
18:10I will hold the air in with the lift.
18:24The last stairs are changing.
18:25The next stairs is not an open room.
18:26The air in the air is a open room.
18:27The next stairs is to walk by the air.
18:28The air is not an open room.
18:28The air is not an open room.
18:29The air is not an open room.
18:31The air is not open to the ground.
18:35Amen.
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