The decree to raise the ratio of goat and sheep milk in halloumi from 10 per cent to 19 per cent is disastrous for dairy farmers, the cattle breeders’ coordinating committee said on Wednesday.
The committee called on all dairy farmers to gather on Friday in Nicosia to discuss the proposal to organise a protest on Thursday, November 2, outside the Presidential Palace and the offices of the European Union, as well as possible legal actions to be taken up in Cyprus and with the EU.
“The minister of commerce, without any consultation and without presenting and analysing […] the evidence […] made an irregular change which renders the dairy industry illegal overnight,” the cattle breeders association charged in its announcement.
The livestock farmers said that the move left producers with unsellable quantities of cow’s milk.
The breeders further claimed that the minister’s decision had the marks of having been pre-determined, since stakeholders were called in just one day prior to the decree’s announcement, without being briefed.
“On the same day [as the ministry of commerce decree on ratios] the agriculture ministry demanded the imposition of higher prices for goat and sheep milk, beyond the two significant increases [already] given in the last year,” the announcement continued.
The breeders said this amounted to a manipulation of the market and creation of an artificial shortage of goat’s and sheep’s milk.
The decision will lead to “impoverishment and destruction of the dairy sector” and extermination of at least half the cattle population, the association said.
Both the minister of commerce and the minister of agriculture were asked to be held to account at the cattle breeders’ meeting, which called upon them to have the “decency and political courage” to explain the reasons behind the “arbitrary and unsubstantiated” decision.
The diary farmers also want an explanation of state policy regarding the marketing of halloumi and the drastic reduction in foreign exports as well as an explanation of imports.
Goat and sheep farmers meanwhile called off a planned strike on Saturday over their own association’s discontent with halloumi specifications.
The milk ratio adjustment comes as a result of the European Union’s protected designation of origin (PDO) guidelines, which state that there must be an eventual 50-50 split between cow’s milk and goat’s and sheep’s milk in halloumi.