Greek sheep and goat cull raises fears of feta cheese shortage

Hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats are being culled in Greece, due to an outbreak of an infectious disease. This may affect the production and exports of the country’s famous feta cheese.

Anastasia Ciorto walks through her abandoned farm on the outskirts of Karditsa in the Thessaly region of central Greece.

An eerie silence descends on the place where 650 sheep are raised.

On November 12, veterinary officials culled all the livestock after discovering a case of sheep and goat pox.

“There is another farm two kilometers away. They had cases of smallpox but they hid them,” she says, referring to her belief that her herd was infected with the disease.

Ms. Sciorto is a veterinarian and has expanded the farm her father built.

Losing animals means financial ruin. Along with the livestock lost by the farm, sheep’s milk, which is sold to produce feta cheese, is referred to as Greek “white gold.”

But more significant is the financial hit, as Ms. Sciorto speaks of the emotional toll. “I was here on the day the sheep were culled. It was very cruel, and I felt like I had failed to protect them.”

Sheep and goat pox is a viral infection. The first cases were detected in northern Greece in August 2024, and the disease has since spread to many areas of the country.

A total of 1,702 incidents were recorded as of mid-November, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Rural Development and Food.

Detecting a single case on the farm means that the entire herd must be culled for preventive reasons. About 417,000 sheep and goats have been culled so far, approximately 4-5% of the previous total.

About 80% is Greek sheep and goat milk He’s moving towards making feta cheese, And he is a Protected designation of origin Within the European Union.

This means that although a similar cheese can be produced elsewhere in the EU, it cannot be called feta. The UK continues to respect this 2002 ruling after Brexit.

Last year, Greece exported €785 million ($909 million; £690 million) of feta cheese, figures from the Hellenic Export Association show. Of this amount, 520 million euros went to European Union countries, and 90 million euros went to the United Kingdom.

The feta must be made from at least 70% sheep’s milk, with the rest from goat’s milk.

Small dairy companies say they are already having problems sourcing sheep’s milk, which could mean potential feta shortages in the future. While prices have not yet risen, this is likely to be the result if the outbreak is not eliminated.

“The limited amount of milk available increases production costs and makes it more difficult to maintain current quantities [of feta] “On the market,” says Professor Dimitris Gogolis from the University of Thessaly’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.

Another sheep farmer near Karditsa, Tasos Manakas, witnessed the culling of his flock of 873 animals on 9 October.

He now spends his days sitting in a small room in his barn. “The store is closed,” he says bitterly.

Mr. Manakas walks past empty metal feeders and a milking parlor that now collects cobwebs. “I would come in the morning, hear the animals bleating, and pet them.

“The day they executed me, I was here. If you cut me that day, I wouldn’t bleed.”

He carefully flips through a government document full of digital tables.

Compensation is provided to affected farmers, ranging from 132 to 220 euros per sheep, depending on its age. Farmers respond that the payments fall far short of covering their losses.

The government has also been criticized for its broader response to the outbreak. The National Scientific Committee for the Management and Control of Sheep and Goat Pox was not established until late October – a full 14 months after the first case was discovered.

Meanwhile, no lockdown zones have been established in areas where the first cases were recorded in the late summer of 2024, and critics say the state veterinary service is significantly understaffed.

Meanwhile, farmers have been arrested for illegally transporting animals in trucks to areas deemed disease-free. Local reports say the infected animals were buried in fields without notifying the authorities.

A spokesman for the Department of Rural Development and Food told the BBC: “We implemented the sheep pox eradication plan from the beginning, as stipulated in European protocols.

“The result was to reach almost zero in the spring of 2025. The decision to establish the Scientific Committee in October 2025 was taken under pressure from one factor – the non-compliance of biosecurity measures by many farmers, which led to an explosion in cases.”

Greece’s Supreme Court has now ruled that prosecutors must investigate potential breaches of biosecurity measures, which many critics say is overdue.

Across the country, there are still farms operating according to 1960s standards – tin huts, walls made of burnt earth or cement bricks, and no fencing.

The BBC visited one of these farms on the outskirts of the city of Larissa in Thessaly. There were two dead sheep lying on the ground.

The owner insisted that there were no cases of smallpox on his farm. He refused to allow photos to be taken. “Some animals have lumps on their chests,” he says. “This is not smallpox, but no one will believe me.”

Sheep and goat farmers in Thessaly are demanding approval for mass vaccination of their flocks, which they say is how the problem is being tackled in Bulgaria and Turkey.

This vaccination is allowed in emergency situations Under EU rules, Farmers are putting great pressure on the government to order vaccines from the authority’s available stock.

However, the Greek government responded that mass vaccination could lead to Greece being classified as an endemic country, which would impose restrictions on the export of sheep and goat milk – especially feta cheese. Greek authorities also confirm that there is currently no approved vaccine against sheep pox.

Professor Gogolis points out that existing older vaccines are effective in countries where smallpox is endemic, but “they are not a tool for eliminating the disease.” [of the disease]“It does not completely prevent infection, and the virus can continue to spread among the vaccinated population.”

However, the situation now seems to be getting out of control.

Members of the National Sheep and Goat Pox Management and Control Commission recently told reporters that livestock farmers in different parts of the country may have carried out as many as one million illegal vaccinations. This distorts the epidemiological picture and makes combating the disease more difficult.

But many ranchers are angry at officials’ assumption. They say these are arbitrary calculations and accuse the Scientific Committee of endangering the export of feta.

Farmer Harris Siskliotis, in the village of Rhizomelos near Volos, listens to all this with deep concern. One infection was discovered on his farm, which led to the preventive culling of 700 sheep.

This was the second time his farm was destroyed, after the devastating floods in Thessaly in 2023.

“It’s very tough,” he told the BBC as he walked between his empty sheep pens.

There are piles of hay bales meant for the sheep to eat, now left unused in the farm yard and quickly rotting.

Mr. Siskliotis is not the type of farmer who sits back and counts his wounds. “I am thinking of establishing a new unit with my son to fatten calves,” he says. “We didn’t learn anything other than raising herds.”