Why Real Feta Cheese Is Disappearing | Big Business

Greece is the world's biggest producer of feta, pumping out 154,000 tons of the cheese in 2025. Feta brings in roughly a billion dollars a year. It's so valuable for the country that it's nicknamed white gold. Normally, the family farms that supply the industry's milk look like this. But now, many are eerily quiet. A highly contagious pox outbreak has swept through Greece's herds, driving up prices of one of the world's most popular cheeses. And the industry is facing another challenge abroad. Countries like the U.S. and Turkey are selling their own feta, despite Greece's legal claim to the name. So what does all this conflict mean for Greece's generational cheese producers and for that feta on your salad? Authentic Greek feta is made with sheep's milk, so it's tangier and crumblier than cheese from cow's milk. Alexandros Botos is the second-generation owner of Roussas Dairy, one of the top five feta producers in Greece. He started his career as an engineer but returned to the family business to modernize the cheesemaking process, investing 7 million euros in automation. Cheese curds used to be cut like this, all by hand. Now, large mechanical knives slice the curds into smaller pieces. The cheese curds are dumped into molds. While cheeses like cheddar and parmesan are pressed to remove all the whey, cheese curds are left to mature for 24 hours. This is the first phase of maturation. While cheeses like cheddar and parmesan are pressed to remove all the whey and bind the curds, feta drains only under its own weight. That gives it the loose, crumbly texture that allows it to absorb liquid from the brine it's stored in. That salt will further draw moisture out of the cheese. There are only a few cheesemakers left in Greece who age their feta in traditional wooden barrels, leading to a richer, less salty flavor. The cheese will be aged for 60 days. Feta is actually one of the world's oldest cheeses. A primitive version of it was mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey. But it wasn't until the 17th century that Greeks began calling it feta, meaning slice, likely because of how it's stored in pieces. By the 20th century, it had become a staple food for working-class Greeks. Then Greeks began immigrating to other countries, driving demand for feta in new markets, such as the US, Australia, and Germany. Soon, many countries began making their own mass-produced versions of feta. But they didn't have robust sheep and goat dairies, so they used what they had plenty of, cows. Cow's milk has less fat and protein than sheep's, so feta made with it isn't as rich or tangy. But cows were cheap and abundant, so their feta was a fraction of the cost. And consumers gobbled it up. By the 1990s, Mediterranean cuisine became a popular fad diet in the US. Brands like Afinos and President cemented Wisconsin as a feta-producing behemoth. Up against growing competition, Greece fought back, arguing that these countries' fetas were counterfeit and eroded Greek heritage. The legal battle over the name went all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the 1990s. Denmark, Germany, and France argued that feta had become a generic term, like cheddar or brie, and wasn't tied to a geographic location. It was just a word for crumbly white cheese. But their argument failed, and in 2002, the EU granted Greece a Protected Designation of Origin, or PDO, meaning that all feta in Europe had to be produced in these regions. About 200 cheeses in Europe have the same protected status, like Parmigiano-Reggiano, Brie de Meaux, and Manchego cheese. It's very important to protect your heritage and also centuries of knowledge how to produce food. That's why we, as Europeans, we are in favor of protecting our products. Anastasios Skouras is the third generation in his family to farm in Thessaly. The region is responsible for about 45% of the country's feta. Authentic feta has to be made mostly from sheep's milk, with up to 30% goats. The livestock must graze on local flora. 15% of Greece's plants can't be found anywhere else on Earth. They're said to give feta its distinctly earthy, peppery flavor. Since earning protected status in 2002, Greece's feta production has jumped 21%. But the battle over the crumbly cheese's name is far from settled. Outside of the EU, countries get to decide if they'll honor Greece's PDO for feta. And major markets like the U.S. and Turkey don't. They allow their domestic producers to market their own cheese as feta, into the European Union. In 2025, the Trump administration negotiated trade deals with Taiwan, Malaysia, and Argentina that allowed U.S. cheese to use the feta label. I'm Greek-American, and so I know very well how important feta is to many people in the U.S., and how much they connect it to Greece. This is like, you know, our flagship export, I think, other than olive oil. From an economic perspective as well, not just culturally, it's a really important product. This growing competition is particularly tough for feta producers who are already facing the worst animal disease in their lifetimes. The goat and sheep pox outbreak started in 2024. Infected sheep can get fevers, red spots, and lesions on their lungs. Among lambs, it has an 80% mortality rate. It usually spreads through the air between two close animals, but it can survive in wool for two months. Because it spreads so easily, the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food decided that wherever a case appears, every animal on the farm, even healthy ones, had to be culled, meaning slaughtered. Giannis found signs of the disease on his sheep in 2025. Months later, all of his animals were gone. Now his farm sits quiet. The government promised to pay farmers like Giannis up to $288 for each purebred animal lost. There were huge delays, and that even if they did come through, the amount was not sufficient to, you know, make up for what the farmers were losing. And Giannis wasn't alone in losing everything. More than 2,600 other farms across Greece have had to cull their herds. We have about 20 herds that have been killed. We couldn't replace them with 20 herds that we lost. We were trying to get a lot more, because they were big. And essentially, we were going to do the same thing, Alexandros had to pay 10% more for the milk he pumped into his feta factory. Between 2024 and 2025, Greece saw a 17% drop in its sheep population. Altogether, the government ordered the culling of over 488,000 animals. No, the situation is not good for us, for the farmers. We were screaming from the very beginning. The only thing that succeeded was to kill so many animals. I'm afraid every day that dawns, we say, what are we going to find? What am I going to find in the herd? If I'm going to find a crossbreed? We haven't lost our sleep. The Greek government also enforced strict biosecurity protocols, including sanitation stations and vet deployment. Anastasios' farm has been under strict lockdown, despite not recording a single case of sheep or goat pox. He sprays and disinfects throughout the facility. The government also mandated that animals in afflicted areas were banned from leaving their fences to graze freely outdoors. So farmers had to feed them commercial grain, which goes against the EU's rules for feta's PDO. Nine months after the outbreak, in early 2025, the European Commission determined Greece's efforts hadn't gone far enough. It urged the Greek government to launch a vaccination campaign. And Greece is saying, no thank you. The Greek government chose not to vaccinate livestock because it risked a temporary ban on dairy exports under EU rules. While vaccination can save animals, it can make it harder to track the virus. And with 65% of its feta sold abroad, Greece wasn't willing to take that chance. There is a real trade cost to vaccinating. But studies have shown that in the long term, culling can have a greater economic damage than vaccines. Because then you have to wait for years to replenish a herd. It got to a point where farmers themselves, who initially did not seem very keen to vaccinate, were essentially begging Greek authorities for the vaccine. Greek farmers took to the streets to protest the lack of vaccination, the widespread culling and delayed payments for their lost herds. The economic impact of the pox and culling can't be overstated. Feta production could fall by roughly 11% in 2026. Experts warn that compared to last year, Greece could produce 30,000 fewer tons of milk in 2026. Yes, there will be a shortage, but obviously the prices are going to rise as well. By June, wholesale prices for Greek feta had already risen to over $11 a kilo. Around 33% year on year, compared to the same period in 2025. Katarina Katsouli has owned Kreti, a restaurant in Athens since 1988. She normally sources her feta from the island of Crete, the homeland of Lesbos. She was forced to find new suppliers, which drove up her costs, an increase she's largely absorbed, rather than passing on to customers. She still serves feta in baked zucchini and saganaki, an appetizer of pan-fried cheese. This could happen more in the food service sector, that probably they are using cheaper alternatives. Particularly now with the cow's milk, it's significantly cheaper compared to feta prices. Lately, the sheep and goat pox infection rates have slowed dramatically in Greece. The number went from 1,700 outbreaks in 2025 to 131 in the first four months of 2026. But some experts like Lydia are skeptical that conditions are improving. Frankly, I don't know that it's working and I don't necessarily trust the official figures. Experts say the damage may outlast the outbreak itself. The sheep that were culled had been bred for generations. Their milk was a key ingredient in the distinctive flavor of authentic Greek feta. And not only do you lose generations of that work, but you lose the ability to process it, the identity of families, of villages, and of regions. Suddenly, overnight, you have thousands of farms that have been put out of operation because of this disease. It raises the question, will other countries move in with their own feta to fill the gap Greece has left behind? I want to believe that farming will continue and it has to continue. And we will stay because after the increase they gave us recently...