00:00Greece is the world's biggest producer of feta, pumping out 154,000 tons of the cheese in 2025.
00:10Feta brings in roughly a billion dollars a year.
00:13It's so valuable for the country that it's nicknamed white gold.
00:26Normally, the family farms that supply the industry's milk look like this.
00:35But now, many are eerily quiet.
00:39A highly contagious pox outbreak has swept through Greece's herds,
00:44driving up prices of one of the world's most popular cheeses.
00:48And the industry is facing another challenge abroad.
01:01Countries like the U.S. and Turkey are selling their own feta, despite Greece's legal claim to the name.
01:07And the other thing, it's something that's asbestos.
01:11So what does all this conflict mean for Greece's generational cheese producers?
01:15And for that feta on your salad?
01:23Authentic Greek feta is made with sheep's milk.
01:25So it's tangier and crumblier than cheese from cow's milk.
01:28And they're eating, eating, eating, and eating,
01:32with salads, with food, with potatoes, with potatoes,
01:35and even in Greek places.
01:38We use the feta.
01:39It's an advantage of the confidence and the tradition of Greece,
01:45the feta factory.
01:48Alexandros Potos is the second generation owner of Rousas Dairy,
01:51one of the top five feta producers in Greece.
01:59He started his career as an engineer,
02:01but returned to the family business to modernize the cheese making process,
02:05investing 7 million euros in automation.
02:15Cheese curds used to be cut like this, all by hand.
02:30Now, large mechanical knives slice the curds into smaller pieces.
02:35The cheese curds are dumped into molds.
02:37And it's immediately transferred here.
02:40The cheese curds remains for a 24-hour period.
02:43It's the first phase of the Rousas Dairy.
02:45While cheeses like cheddar and parmesan are pressed to remove all the way
02:49and bind the curds,
02:51feta drains only under its own weight.
02:53That gives it the loose, crumbly texture
02:56that allows it to absorb liquid from the brine it's stored in.
03:10That salt will further draw moisture out of the cheese.
03:14There are only a few cheesemakers left in Greece
03:16who age their feta in traditional wooden barrels,
03:19leading to a richer, less salty flavor.
03:22The cheese will be aged for 60 days.
03:26Feta is actually one of the world's oldest cheeses.
03:29A primitive version of it was mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey.
03:33But it wasn't until the 17th century
03:36that Greeks began calling it feta, meaning slice,
03:39likely because of how it's stored in pieces.
03:42By the 20th century,
03:43it had become a staple food for working-class Greeks.
03:46Then, Greeks began immigrating to other countries,
03:49driving demand for feta in new markets,
03:52such as the U.S., Australia, and Germany.
03:55Soon, many countries began making
03:56their own mass-produced versions of feta.
03:59But they didn't have robust sheep and goat dairies,
04:02so they used what they had plenty of — cows.
04:06Cow's milk has less fat and protein than sheep's,
04:09so feta made with it isn't as rich or tangy.
04:12But cows were cheap and abundant,
04:14so their feta was a fraction of the cost.
04:17And consumers gobbled it up.
04:19But the 1990s Mediterranean cuisine
04:21became a popular fad diet in the U.S.
04:24Brands like Afinos and President
04:26cemented Wisconsin as a feta-producing behemoth.
04:30Up against growing competition, Greece fought back,
04:33arguing that these countries' fetas were counterfeit
04:36and eroded Greek heritage.
04:38The legal battle over the name went all the way
04:44in the 1990s.
04:45Denmark, Germany, and France argued that feta had become
04:48a generic term, like cheddar or brie,
04:51and wasn't tied to a geographic location.
04:53It was just a word for crumbly white cheese.
04:56But their argument failed, and in 2002,
05:00the EU granted Greece a protected designation of origin,
05:03or PDO, meaning that all feta in Europe
05:06had to be produced in these regions.
05:09About 200 cheeses in Europe have the same protected status,
05:13like Parmigiano-Reggiano, Brie de Meaux, and Manchego cheese.
05:18It's very important to protect your heritage,
05:21and also centuries of knowledge how to produce food.
05:27That's why we, as Europeans,
05:29we are in favor of protecting our products.
05:33Anastasios Skoras is the third generation in his family
05:36to farm in Thessaly.
05:38The region is responsible for about 45% of the country's feta.
05:44I am a farm farmer from the day I was born.
05:48Authentic feta has to be made mostly from sheep's milk,
05:51with up to 30% goats.
05:54The livestock must graze on local flora.
05:5815% of Greece's plants can't be found anywhere else on Earth.
06:02They're said to give feta its distinctly earthy, peppery flavor.
06:11Since earning protected status in 2002,
06:15Greece's feta production has jumped 21%.
06:18But the battle over the crumbly cheese's name is far from settled.
06:22Outside of the EU, countries get to decide
06:26if they'll honor Greece's PDO for feta.
06:28And major markets like the U.S. and Turkey don't.
06:32They allow their domestic producers to market their own cheese as feta.
06:36In 2025, the Trump administration negotiated trade deals
06:40with Taiwan, Malaysia, and Argentina
06:42that allowed U.S. cheese to use the feta label.
06:46I'm Greek-American, and so I know very well
06:50how important feta is to many people in the U.S.,
06:55and how much they connected to Greece.
06:57This is like, you know, our flagship export,
07:00I think, other than olive oil.
07:02From an economic perspective as well, not just culturally,
07:04it's a really important product.
07:07This growing competition is particularly tough for feta producers
07:11who are already facing the worst animal disease in their lifetimes.
07:15The goat and sheeppox outbreak started in 2024.
07:20Infected sheep can get fevers, red spots, and lesions on their lungs.
07:25Among lambs, it has an 80% mortality rate.
07:35It usually spreads through the air between two close animals,
07:38but it can survive in wool for two months.
07:43Because it spreads so easily, the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food
07:47decided that wherever a case appears, every animal on the farm,
07:52even healthy ones, had to be culled, meaning slaughtered.
07:59Yanis found signs of the disease on his sheep in 2025.
08:04Months later, all of his animals were gone.
08:08Now his farm sits quiet.
08:16It's not easy to have such animals and love you.
08:20You can see that there are people who have a dog
08:23and have a dog.
08:25It's not that now you have such animals.
08:29Here they had the animals.
08:34Here they had the animals.
08:36You can see that there are animals.
08:37You can see that there are animals inside.
08:58The government promised to pay farmers like Yanis up to $288
09:03for each purebred animal lost.
09:05There were huge delays and that even if they did come through,
09:11the amount was not sufficient to make up for what the farmers were losing.
09:39And Yanis wasn't alone in losing everything.
09:43More than 2,600 other farms across Greece have had to be
09:47to cull their herds.
10:16The
10:35Alexandros had to pay 10% more for the milk he pumped into his Feta factory.
10:52Between 2024 and 2025, Greece saw a 17% drop in its sheep population.
11:01Altogether, the government ordered the culling of over 488,000 animals.
11:27The Greek government also enforced strict biosecurity protocols, including sanitation stations and vet deployment.
11:37Anastasios' farm has been under strict lockdown, despite not recording a single case of sheep or goat pox.
11:50He sprays and disinfects throughout the facility.
12:08The government also mandated that animals in afflicted areas were banned from leaving their fences to graze freely outdoors.
12:16So farmers had to feed them commercial grain, which goes against the EU's rules for Feta's PDO.
12:24Nine months after the outbreak, in early 2025, the European Commission determined Greece's efforts hadn't gone far enough.
12:32It urged the Greek government to launch a vaccination campaign.
12:37And Greece is saying, no, thank you.
12:41The Greek government chose not to vaccinate livestock because it risked a temporary ban on dairy exports under EU rules.
12:49While vaccination can save animals, it can make it harder to track the virus.
12:54And with 65% of its Feta sold abroad, Greece wasn't willing to take that chance.
12:59There is a real trade cost to vaccinating.
13:04But studies have shown that in the long term, culling can have a greater economic damage than vaccines.
13:10Because then you have to wait for years to replenish a herd.
13:16It got to a point where farmers themselves, who initially did not seem very keen to vaccinate, were essentially begging
13:24Greek authorities for that vaccine.
13:29Greek farmers took to the streets to protest the lack of vaccination, the widespread culling, and delayed payments for their
13:35lost herds.
13:46The economic impact of the pox and culling can't be overstated.
13:51Beta production could fall by roughly 11% in 2026.
14:00Experts warn that compared to last year, Greece could produce 30,000 fewer tons of milk in 2026.
14:06That could be around 20% lower.
14:11Yes, there's a shortage, but obviously the prices are going to rise as well.
14:19By June, wholesale prices for Greek Feta had already risen to over $11 a kilo.
14:25Around 33% year on year, compared to the same period in 2025.
14:51Katerina Katsouli has owned Crete, a restaurant in Athens since 1988.
15:01Katerina Katsouli has owned Crete, a restaurant in Athens since 1988.
15:02I live in Germany.
15:03We are living from this shop and many other products.
15:08She normally sources her Feta from the island of Lesbos.
15:12As you know, it stopped.
15:14We could not buy products.
15:18She was forced to find new suppliers, which drove up her costs, an increase she's largely absorbed rather than passing
15:26on to customers.
15:52She still serves feta in baked zucchini and saganaki, an appetizer of pan-fried cheese.
15:59In addition, the Greeks would be able to get a little bit more and be used in other dishes, such
16:07as the green tea, which is for me.
16:11And the other thing is something that is like a bread.
16:16This could happen more in the food service sector, that probably they are using cheaper alternatives.
16:22Particularly now, with the cow's milk, it's significantly cheaper compared to feta prices.
16:29Lately, the sheep and goat pox infection rates have slowed dramatically in Greece.
16:34The number went from 1,700 outbreaks in 2025 to 131 in the first four months of 2026.
16:41But some experts, like Lydia, are skeptical that conditions are improving.
16:46Frankly, I don't know that it's working, and I don't necessarily trust the official figures.
16:56The pandemic will come and fall, like humans, and animals.
17:02It's not going to kill the animals at the same time, because we'll be out of production at some point.
17:08Experts say the damage may outlast the outbreak itself.
17:12The sheep that were cold had been bred for generations.
17:16Their milk was a key ingredient in the distinctive flavor of authentic Greek feta.
17:20And not only do you lose generations of that work, but you lose the identity of families, of villages, and
17:30of regions.
17:31Suddenly, overnight, you have thousands of farms that have been put out of operation because of this disease.
17:40It raises the question, will other countries move in with their own feta, to fill the gap Greece has left
17:46behind?
17:49I'm going to wait until I make a living.
17:52I will wait until I make a living.
17:53It's not an alternative, because we have invested.
17:56All of our lives have invested in this.
17:59I want to believe that it will continue to grow.
18:01And it must continue to grow.
18:04And we will continue to grow.
18:05After that, after an increase in the future, we will be able to grow.
18:07And lead me here on the lift.
18:08.
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