ATHENS — Greek farmers are begging for vaccines to save their flocks from sheep pox, and Brussels is offering them for free. But the Athens government doesn’t want them, preferring to cull infected animals. That’s all very bad news for feta cheese fans. Sheep pox is so infectious that global farming regulations require whole herds to be slaughtered immediately after even a single case is detected. Since the first case emerged in a northern region of Greece in 2024, authorities have culled more than 470,000 sheep and goats and closed some 2,500 farms nationwide. The country’s livestock breeding industry is now on the verge of collapse — endangering the trademark white cheese, into which producers pour 80 percent of the country’s sheep and goat milk. “If there is no immediate response, feta cheese will become a luxury item,” said Vaso Fasoula, a sheep farmer in Greece’s agricultural heartland of Thessaly, who has confined her 2,500 sheep to protect them from the contagion. An alternative to all this killing: vaccines, available free from Brussels. “Vaccination is the only additional measure that can stop the occurrence of new outbreaks, limit further spread to the rest of Greece and reduce the number of animals to be killed,” wrote Animal Welfare Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi to Athens last year. Yet the government has repeatedly rejected this option, citing the steep financial consequences and damage to exports. That refusal to embrace wide-scale prevention measures has infuriated farmers and is fueling further tensions with Brussels over an agriculture subsidy scandal — all while putting one of Greece’s most famous exports at risk. Farmers and livestock breeders have been blocking national highways all over the country for the last 40 days in one of the biggest mobilizations the country has experienced in recent years. Mass vaccination is among their demands, and they have said they won’t leave the roadblocks until the vaccination campaign starts. Behind the government’s refusal to vaccinate, critics allege, are not only misguided priorities but also a corruption cover-up. ANTI-VAX Sheep pox vaccines would be free, but they would nonetheless come at a high cost. Greek Agriculture Minister Konstantinos Tsiaras said a nationwide vaccine initiative would see Greece classified as a country where sheep pox is endemic. That could jeopardize exports, given the desperation of other countries to keep the bug beyond their borders. “Our scientists are clear,” Tsiaras said in October. “They do not recommend vaccination. Farmers are in a difficult position, but we cannot do anything other than follow the scientific guidance.” While a sheep pox declaration means restrictions on exporting animals — the virus can live in wool for up to six months — shipments of treated milk products like feta cheese would be less affected. Τhe trademark salty, white, crumbly delight — a protected designation of origin within the EU — is a major economic driver. Greece produces over 97,000 tons of feta annually, more than two-thirds of which is exported. The country netted a record €785 million from feta sales in 2024. Livestock breeders say the price of feta cheese has already increased significantly and will rise even further in the spring when the shortage becomes apparent. (The feta cheese currently on the market has been produced from milk from previous months.) Yet the government is standing firm against livestock jabs. “There is no approved vaccine in Greece,” said Charalampos Billinis, rector at the University of Thessaly and a member of the government’s national scientific committee for the management and control of sheep pox. “And there is no approved vaccine in the European Union.” That’s true — but it doesn’t mean there’s no safe, effective inoculation against sheep pox. Because the disease has not circulated in the EU for decades, manufacturers have not asked the European Medicines Agency to greenlight a vaccine. “This is a standard situation for animal diseases not usually present in the EU,” a Commission spokesperson said in an email. “No manufacturer has economic interest in obtaining marketing authorisation as they do not expect specific diseases to spread.” That’s why EU legislation offers a path for member countries to use vaccines that are approved in other parts of the world when animal diseases re-appear in the bloc, the spokesperson said. Plenty of doses of just such vaccines are available in EU stockpiles, and Brussels is urging Greece to repeat its success from the 1980s, when it used the vaccine to shut down a sheep pox outbreak. “Experience, science and veterinary expertise further support the need to revert to vaccination in Greece now,” Várhelyi wrote to the government in October in a letter seen by POLITICO. That’s where a fundamental disagreement arises. As Billinis argued, exposing the animals to the virus via the vaccine would increase positive testing rates, further prolonging trade restrictions, when the virus can still be contained in other ways. Farmers don’t buy it. “This disease is not leaving Greece; it has come to stay and without the vaccine, it will not go away,” said George Terzakis, president of a local livestock association in Thessaly. He’s among the breeders who allege the government’s vaccine skepticism isn’t so much about science as their desire to hide the full implications of a snowballing farm scandal. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is pursuing dozens of cases in which Greeks allegedly received agricultural funds from the EU for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for animals they did not own, depriving legitimate farmers and livestock breeders of the funds they deserved. POLITICO first reported on the scheme in February. “If our animals were vaccinated, the number of doses used would reveal the country’s real animal population,” Terzakis said. “Everything is being done because of the scandal.” When asked about the allegation, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said Athens had “faithfully followed European directives, which are the result of all the recommendations that, at the end of the day, led to specific decisions.” FLOODS AND PLAGUES As the infection spreads, families who have lived with their sheep and goats for generations are watching them vanish in a day, buried in large pits — many times on their land. Some have turned to illegal vaccination. The government estimates that one million illegal doses have been used, distorting epidemiological data. The broader region of Thessaly, which produces a quarter of the country’s food, was hit by devastating floods in 2023, followed the next year by an outbreak of sheep and goat plague and then sheep pox. “The disease spread like wildfire. We didn’t have any time to react,” said Dimitris Papaziakas, a breeder from a village close to Larissa city in central Greece and president of an association of livestock farmers affected by smallpox and plague. In mid-November he had to watch his 350 sheep be culled and then buried outside his sheep pen. “I cannot recall that day without starting to cry all over again,” he said. In one village, Koulouri, only one out of 10 units remains operational. Fasoula, the sheep farmer who penned her 2,500 sheep in May, is still keeping the infection at bay in nearby Amfithea. She constantly disinfects the cars and everything else on the farm, hoping for the best. But she’s concerned about how the animals were buried along the banks of a river. “If there is another flood, everything that has been buried will come to the surface.”

The Italian government is satisfied with new funding promised by Brussels to European farmers and is signaling that it may cast its decisive vote in favor of the EU’s huge trade deal with the Latin American Mercosur bloc. Ahead of Friday’s vote by EU member countries, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Rome was happy with the European Commission’s efforts to make the deal more palatable. Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida also said the accord represented an opportunity — especially for food exporters. “Italy has never changed its position: We have always supported the conclusion of the agreement,” Tajani said on Wednesday evening. Yet they stopped short of saying outright that Italy would vote in favor of the deal. Instead, within sight of the finish line, Rome is pressing to tighten additional safeguards to shield the EU farm market from being destabilized by any potential influx of South American produce. Rome’s endorsement of the accord, which has been a quarter century in the making and would create a free-trade zone spanning more than 700 million people, is crucial. A qualified majority of 15 of the EU’s 27 countries representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population is needed. Italy, with its large population, effectively holds the casting vote. France and Poland are still holding out against a pro-Mercosur majority led by Germany — but they lack the numbers to stall the deal. If it goes through, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could fly to Paraguay to sign the accord as soon as next week. The bloc’s other members are Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. ‘AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY’ Italy praised a raft of additional measures proposed by the Commission — including farm market safeguards and fresh budget promises on agriculture funding — as “the most comprehensive system of protections ever included in a free trade agreement signed by the EU.” Tajani, who as deputy prime minister oversees trade policy, has long taken a pro-Mercosur position. He said the deal would help the EU diversify its trade relationships and boost “the strategic autonomy and economic sovereignty of Italy and our continent.” Even Lollobrigida, who has sympathized in the past with farmers’ concerns on the deal, is striking a more positive tone. At a meeting hosted by the Commission in Brussels on Wednesday, Lollobrigida described Mercosur as “an excellent opportunity.” The minister, who is close to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and is from her Brothers of Italy party, also said its provisions on so-called geographical indications would help Italy promote its world-famous delicacies in South America. It would mean no more ‘Parmesão,’” he said, referring to Italian-sounding knockoffs of the famed hard cheese. ONE MORE THING … Lollobrigida said Italy could back the deal if the farm market safeguards are tightened. The EU institutions agreed in December to require the Commission to investigate surges in imports of beef or poultry from Mercosur if volumes rise by 8 percent from the average, or if those imports undercut comparable EU products by a similar margin. Even Francesco Lollobrigida, who has sympathized in the past with farmers’ concerns on the deal, is striking a more positive tone. | Fabio Cimaglia/EPA “We want to go from 8 percent to 5 percent. And we believe that the conditions are there to also reach this goal,” Lollobrigida told Italian daily IlSole24Ore in an interview on Thursday. Meloni pulled the emergency brake at a pre-Christmas EU summit, forcing the Commission to delay the final vote on the deal while it worked on ways to address her concerns around EU farm funding. In response Von der Leyen proposed this week to offer earlier access to up to €45 billion in agricultural funding under the bloc’s next long-term budget. Giorgio Leali reported from Paris and Gerardo Fortuna from Brussels.

AOSTA, Italy — The 380,000 wheels of Fontina PDO cheese matured each year are tiny in number compared to the millions churned out by more famous rivals — but that doesn’t make the creamy cheese any less important to producers in Valle d’Aosta, a region nestled in the Italian Alps.  Fontina’s protected designation of origin (PDO) provides consumers at home and abroad a “guarantee of quality and of a short supply chain,” explained Stéphanie Cuaz, of the consortium responsible for protecting the cheese from cheap copycats, as she navigated a hairpin turn on the way to a mountain pasture. With fewer than a hundred cows, a handful of farm hands and a small house where milk is transformed into cheese, the pasture at the end of the winding road feels far away from global trade tussles its flagship product is embroiled in. The EU’s scheme to protect the names of local delicacies from replicas produced elsewhere has proved controversial in international trade negotiations. For instance, in 2023, free trade talks with Australia were swamped by complaints from its cheese producers railing against EU demands that they refrain from using household names like “Mozzarella di Bufala Campana” and “Feta.”  Fontina was caught in the crossfire, having been included in the list of names the EU wants protected Down Under. Fontina DOP Alpeggio is a variant of the cheese produced during the summer months using milk from cows grazing in alpine pastures up to 2,700 meters above sea level | Lucia Mackenzie/POLITICO. No such protections exist in the U.S., where in the state of Wisconsin alone, there are a dozen “fontina” producers, one of which won bronze at the World Cheese Awards in 2022.  Europe’s small-time food producers find themselves in a bind: their protected status is vital for promoting their traditional products abroad, but charges of protectionism have soured some trade negotiations. Nonetheless, many of the bloc’s trading partners clearly see the benefits of the system, baking in similar protections for their own products into trade deals. PROTECTION VS PROTECTIONISM Fontina cheese can only be labeled as such if several strict criteria are met. Cows of certain breeds need to be fed with hay of a certain caliber and, crucially, every step of the cheesemaking process must take place within the region’s borders.   For Cuaz, who grew up on a dairy farm in Doues, a small town of around 500 people perched on the valley side, the protection of the Fontina name is vital to keep farming alive and sufficiently paid in the region. Tucked up against the French and Swiss borders, Valle d’Aosta is Italy’s least populated region, home to just over 120,000 inhabitants speaking a mixture of Italian, French and the local Valdôtain dialect. Fontina — which with its distinctive nutty flavor can be enjoyed on a charcuterie board, in a fondue, or encased in a veal chop — is one of over 3,600 foods, wines, and spirits registered under the EU’s geographical indications (GI) system. This protects the names of products that are uniquely linked to a specific region. The idea is to make them easier to promote and keep small producers competitive. In the EU alone, GI products bring in €75 billion in annual revenue and command a price that’s 2.23 times higher than those without the status, the bloc’s Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen proclaimed earlier this year. He called the scheme a “true EU success story.” The GI system is predominantly used in gastronomic powerhouses like Italy and France, and Hansen hopes to promote uptake in the eastern half of the bloc.  Italy has the most geographical indications in the world, accounting for €20 billion in turnover, the country’s Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida pointed out, describing the system as an “extraordinary value multiplier.” ‘NOTHING MORE THAN A TRADE BARRIER’ While several trading partners apparently share the enthusiasm of Hansen and Lollobrigida  — the EU’s trade agreements with countries from South Korea to Central America and Canada include protections for selected GIs — others view the protections as, well, protectionist. The U.S. has long been the system’s most vocal critic, with the Trade Representative’s annual report on intellectual property protection calling it out as “highly concerning” and “harmful.” Washington argues that the rules undermine existing trademarks and that product names like “fontina,” “parmesan” and “feta” are common and shouldn’t be reserved for use by certain regions. That reflects the U.S. dairy industry’s resentment towards Europe’s GIs: Krysta Harden, U.S. Dairy Export Council president, argued they are “nothing more than a trade barrier dressed up as intellectual property protection.” Meanwhile, the National Milk Producers’ Federation blames the scheme, at least in part, for the U.S. agri-food trade deficit.  American opposition to the system doesn’t stop at its own trade relationship with the EU. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office also accused the EU of pressuring trading partners to block certain imports and vowed to combat the bloc’s “aggressive promotion of its exclusionary GI policies.” DOUBLING DOWN Unfazed by the criticism, Hansen continues to tout geographical indications as vital in the EU’s ongoing trade negotiations with other countries.  The EU’s long-awaited trade accord with the Latin American Mercosur bloc is heading toward ratification and includes GI protections for both sides. Speaking in Brazil last month, Hansen went out of his way to praise his hosts for protecting canastra, a highland cheese, and cachaça, a sugarcane liquor, against imitations.  Fifty-eight of the GIs protected under the agreement are Italian, Lollobrigida told POLITICO. This protects Italy’s reputation for high-quality food, he said, and ensures “that Mercosur citizens receive top-quality products.” The EU recently concluded a deal with Indonesia which will protect more than 200 EU products, and a geographical indication agreement is actively being discussed in talks on a free-trade deal with India that both sides hope to wrap up this year. As negotiations with Australia pick up once again, the issue of GI cheeses is expected to return to the spotlight. The U.S. pushback on GIs in other countries has fallen on deaf ears, argued John Clarke, the EU’s former lead agriculture negotiator. He criticized detractors for peddling “specious arguments which bear no relationship to intellectual property rights.” American claims that some terms are universally generic are “illegitimate” and ultimately “very unsuccessful,” in Clarke’s view. “They came too late to the party,” he said, “and their arguments were not very convincing from a legal point of view.” CULTURE AND COMMERCE  The uptake of GIs in other countries demonstrates the additional value the schemes can bring for rural communities and cultural heritage, Clarke posited.  In Valle d’Aosta, the GI system “keeps people and maybe also young farmers linked to this region,” argued Cuaz, adding that young people leaving rural areas in favor of urban centers is a real problem for her region. From tournaments to find the “Queen” of the herd that are a highlight of summer weekends to the “Désarpa” parade marking the end of the season as cows return to the valley from their Alpine pastures, Fontina cheese production keeps traditions alive in the tiny region every year. The dairy industry even plays a role in making use of abandoned copper mines, where thousands of cheese wheels mature annually. Thousands of cheese wheels are matured the Valpelline warehouse, built in the tunnels of a former copper mine. | Lucia Mackenzie/POLITICO. Supporters of the GI scheme also point to the food and wine tourism opportunities it offers. Les Cretes vineyard, winery and tasting room represent one such success story.  The flavors imbued into traditional and native grape varieties by the soil of the Valle d’Aosta’s high-altitude vineyards justify its inclusion as a geographically protected product, explained Monique Salerno, who has worked for the family business for 15 years and is in charge of tastings and events. The premium price on the local wines is vital to keep the producers competitive, given that the steep vines need to be picked by hand, she added. The business expanded in 2017, building a tasting room to draw tourists to Aymavilles, the town with a population of just over 2,000 that houses much of the vineyard. TARIFF TROUBLE While American critics have, in Clarke’s view, “lost the war on terroir,” Europe’s small-time food producers are not immune to the rollercoaster of tit-for-tat tariffs that have dominated recent EU-U.S. trade negotiations.  Like the vast majority of European products heading to the U.S., cheese is subject to a 15 percent blanket tariff. In the meantime, however, organizational mishaps led to some temporary doubling of tariffs on Italian cheeses, angering major producers.  The whole saga has caused uncertainty, said Ermes Fichet, administrative manager of the Milk and Fontina Producers’ Cooperative.  The Les Cretes vineyard on the slopes surrounding Aymavilles. | Lucia Mackenzie/POLITICO The U.S. is Fontina’s largest overseas market, accounting for around 60 percent of direct exports. However, producers aren’t fearing for their livelihoods, yet, as most Fontina cheese isn’t exported at all: an estimated 95 percent of wheels are sent to distributors in Italy. Rather, the impact of U.S. trade policy is long term. The American market would in theory be able to absorb all of Fontina’s production, Fichet explains, but the sale of similar cheeses at lower prices there makes it difficult to expand market share.  According to figures released by the USDA’s statistics service, over 5.1 million kilos of “fontina” cheese was produced in Wisconsin alone in 2024. That comes out to a higher volume than the 3.1 million kilos of GI-certified Fontina originating in Valle d’Aosta annually.  And looking elsewhere isn’t an easy option for the small-time cheese makers, even if future trade agreements include GI recognition. While markets in countries like Saudi Arabia are growing, they would never close the gap left by U.S. producers if trade ties worsen, said Fichet.  Responding to the foreign detractors, he highlighted the benefits from the scheme at home. Fontina DOP “allows us to maintain the agricultural reality of certain places … it’s an extra reason to try to help those who are committed to carrying on with a product that is, let’s say, the little flower of the Valle d’Aosta.”