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.”

Brussels is about to get another reminder that tractors don’t run on promises. Despite a flood of legislative goodies and concessions, some 10,000 farmers from all 27 EU countries are expected to descend on the EU quarter for what the bloc’s main farm lobby Copa-Cogeca says will be the biggest farm protests Brussels has seen this century. Tractors are expected. Speeches are planned. As for manure or burning hay? That, apparently, depends on who shows up. “We’ve told everyone to behave,” said Peter Meedendorp, the head of Europe’s young farmers group CEJA. “But maybe the group from northern France — they are more radical — we can’t say what they’ll do.” Even the EU’s agriculture commissioner admits the protest defies a single explanation. Some farmers are coming over trade. Others over the next EU budget. Others over animal diseases or green rules.  “It’s difficult to say they are coming for one or the other reason,” Christophe Hansen told POLITICO. “There are several reasons — and they are not the same depending on where the farmers are coming from.” That helps explain why farmers are back in Brussels — again — even as the European Commission insists it has bent over backward to meet their demands. From shielding farm payments in the next EU budget, to rewriting pesticide rules and slowing down trade deals, Brussels says it’s trying. Farmers say it’s still not enough. Below, we break down the main grievances driving Thursday’s march — and rate both the EU’s response and the farmers’ level of anger using our highly scientific pen-and-poop scale: Five pens for a robust policy response; a five-manure rating for peak anger.  BUDGET ANXIETY The complaint: Farmers fear their slice of the EU budget will be trimmed to fund other priorities. EU answer: Keeping roughly €300 billion in EU payments flowing to farmers after 2027. Policy response rating: Tough manure rating: As Brussels braces for a brutal fight over the next EU budget, agriculture has — for the most part — escaped the axe. While other policy areas are being told to expect trade-offs, farming has won rare protections. Hansen has locked in long-term guarantees for direct payments to farmers and added new targets aimed at keeping rural areas economically viable, just months after the proposal was unveiled. Officials note no other sector enjoys that kind of treatment. It didn’t come easily. The Commission’s budget officials had eyed agriculture as one of the few pots big enough to help bankroll other, more strategic priorities. Hansen drew the line. Farmers, however, say that after decades of the Common Agricultural Policy being a given, guarantees on paper don’t settle what their share of the EU budget will look like once negotiations begin in earnest. TRADE TENSIONS The complaint: Free-trade deals flooding the EU market with unfair foreign competition.  EU answer: Refusing to adopt the Mercosur trade agreement until backstops are inked into law — potentially delaying the whole deal. Policy response rating: Tough manure rating: The Commission is determined to sign a deal with the Mercosur countries by the end of the year that would make it easier for a limited amount of beef, poultry and other agricultural goods to enter the bloc. That’s sparking outrage among farmers in major producing countries like France and Poland. The EU is in the process of finalizing “safeguard” measures to protect these sectors that could be activated if prices or import volumes change drastically as a result of the agreement — but farmers aren’t convinced.  “It’s the cumulative effect,” said Francie Gorman, president of the Irish Farmers’ Association who is driving his tractor to Brussels all the way from Dublin. “Every time a trade deal is done, it seems to us like farming becomes a bargaining chip and that farmers are sold out.” Sure enough, the farmers’ trade demands go beyond stopping the Mercosur agreement. They want other trading partners to be forced to meet EU production standards to export their products to the bloc, and are calling for “balanced” imports from Ukraine to avoid undercutting producers within the bloc. ENVIRONMENTAL RULES The complaint: EU regulations make life more difficult for Europeans farmers, especially compared with the competition abroad. EU answer: Environment tape-cutting and new rules making it easier to access pesticides in Europe and harder to use them abroad. Policy response rating: Tough manure rating: No one can say the Commission isn’t trying to win over farmers on pesticides. Over the past week, they’ve announced bills that would introduce unlimited approvals for many pesticides and give farmers an extra year to phase out toxic substances. “I appreciate they are making necessary steps,” said Meedendorp, conceding that yes, on some issues, the Commission is doubling over backward to appease farm groups. But “being happy on one file … doesn’t mean we don’t have other problems.” A slew of proposals on trade, particularly a plan that would essentially force farmers in third countries to stop using pesticides banned in the EU, are also a play to even the field for European farmers.  Those too are welcome, though farmers are skeptical that border checks will actually stop imports of, say, Brazilian sugar beets grown with neonicotinoids.  And they argue the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for fertilizers, set to go into force on Jan. 1, should be postponed because of its “drastic impact” on fertilizer prices.  Other Commission efforts have fallen flat. The farm lobby Copa-Cogeca dismissed a recent environmental simplification bill as only “cosmetic changes.” NATIONAL GRIEVANCES  The complaint: In France, par exemple, they’re culling the cows to fight the spread of disease.  EU answer: Paris is responding to lumpy skin disease by taking an even harder line against Mercosur. Policy response rating: Tough manure rating: French farmers are among the fiercest opponents of Mercosur. But like most in the tractor convoy, they’ve got plenty of ire for their own capital.  Paris is fighting the spread of lumpy skin disease, a cattle plague that spreads rapidly and causes major production losses, by mandating the systematic culling of infected herds. In opposition to that protocol, several French farmers — who argue that only infected animals, not entire herds, should be culled — have once again begun blocking highways with their tractors to draw public attention. The movement has been driven by the hard-line Coordination Rurale, the country’s second-largest farmers’ union, which is often associated with the far right. The largest union, the FNSEA, has also warned that protests would become “much more significant” if the Mercosur trade deal is signed. Wary of a prolonged standoff with a profession that enjoys broad public sympathy, the government has sought to show it is working around the clock to bring the situation under control. In addition to pushing to postpone Mercosur, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is holding daily meetings to address the lumpy skin disease outbreak and has made the rapid delivery of vaccines to farms across France a top priority. GENERAL DISCONTENT  The complaint: It’s a hard life for farmers and EU is making it worse EU answer: Sympathy, simplification pledges and tweaks around the edges. Policy response rating: Tough manure rating: For many farmers, Thursday’s protest isn’t really about one regulation or one trade deal. It’s about everything. It’s about 14-hour days, seven days a week. About animals that don’t care if it’s a weekend or a holiday. About paperwork done late at night, after the milking is finished, written in a language that can feel like it comes from another planet. About being told to “diversify” or “innovate” while barely breaking even. It’s about isolation. Rural communities emptying out. Neighbors retiring with no one to take over. Mental health strains that Brussels rarely talks about — and struggles farmers say few outsiders understand. It’s also about money. Farmers are price-takers in global markets they don’t control, squeezed between supermarket buying power, volatile commodity prices and rising costs for fuel, fertilizer and feed. When prices spike, the gains rarely reach the farm. When they crash, farmers absorb the hit. Then come the animal diseases. The forced culls. The climate blame. And the feeling that decisions shaping livelihoods are taken far away, by people who have never set foot in a barn. That anger hardens into resentment. This is the one grievance Brussels can’t legislate away. And it’s why, even when the Commission bends, farmers keep coming back.

LONDON — Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horsemeat scandal of 2013, a group of influential MPs warned as they dismissed a recent personal import ban on EU meat and cheese as “toothless.” The government moved in April to prohibit travelers from EU countries from bringing meat and dairy products into the U.K. following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease across the continent. However, as reported by POLITICO, the ban has not been fully enforced, with experts warning that U.K. health officials lack the funds to uphold the rules. In a damning report on Monday, the parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee warned that “alarming amounts” of meat and dairy products were still being illegally imported for both personal consumption and sale. The committee welcomed the government’s ban on personal imports of meat and dairy from the EU but described it as “toothless,” with prohibited products continuing to enter the U.K. through airports, seaports and the Eurotunnel in freight, parcels, personal baggage and passenger vehicles. “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horse meat scandal,” committee chair Alistair Carmichael said. “A still bigger concern is the very real risk of a major animal disease outbreak. The single case of foot-and-mouth disease in Germany this year, most likely caused by illegally imported meat, cost its economy one billion euros.” He urged the government to “get a grip on what has become a crisis” by establishing a national taskforce, boosting food crime intelligence networks, enforcing “real deterrents,” and giving port health and local authorities the resources and powers they need.   During the committee’s nine-month inquiry into animal and plant health, experts painted a gruesome picture of the situation at the border, describing cases of meat arriving in unsanitary conditions, often in the back of vans, stashed in plastic bags, suitcases and cardboard boxes. At the Port of Dover alone, port health officials say they intercepted 70 tons of illegal meat imports from vehicles between January and the end of April, compared with 24 tons during the same period in 2024. During a Public Accounts Committee session on animal disease last week, Emma Miles, director general for food, biosecurity and trade at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said it was unclear whether the increase in the number of seizures of illegal meat at Dover was due to a rise in crime or to better surveillance. “When you’re catching people it might just mean you are doing better surveillance and enforcement,” she said.