Greek sheep and goat culling sparks fears of sheep cheese shortage

Hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats are being culled in Greece due to an infectious disease outbreak. It could affect the production and export of the country’s famous sheep cheese.

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

An eerie silence reigns over the area where 650 sheep are raised.

On November 12, after cases of pox were discovered in sheep and goats, veterinary officials culled all livestock.

“There was another farm two kilometers away. They had cases of pox but hid it,” she said, alluding to her belief that her cattle were infected with the disease.

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

Losing animals means financial ruin – in addition to the farm’s lost livestock, the sheep’s milk used to produce feta cheese is often referred to as Greece’s “white gold.”

However, Ms. Sciurtu spoke not just of the financial hit, but also the emotional toll. “I was here the day the sheep were culled. It was cruel and I felt I 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 parts of the country.

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, a total of 1,702 incidents had been recorded as of mid-November.

The discovery of a case on a farm means the entire herd must be culled for precautionary reasons. About 417,000 sheep and goats have been disposed of so far, about 4-5% of the previous total.

About 80% Greek sheep and goat milk Dedicated to making sheep cheese, this is a protected designation of origin within the EU.

This means that while similar cheese can be produced elsewhere in the EU, it cannot be called feta cheese. The UK will continue to respect the 2002 ruling after Brexit.

Greece exported 785 million euros ($909 million; £690 million) of feta cheese last year, according to the Greek Export Association. Of this amount, €520 million went to other EU countries and €90 million went to the UK.

Feta cheese must be made from at least 70% sheep’s milk, with the remainder goat’s milk.

Small dairies say they are already experiencing problems sourcing goat’s milk, which could mean there could be shortages of feta in the future. Although prices have not yet risen in reverse, it is likely to happen if the epidemic is not eradicated.

Professor Dimitris Gougoulis from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Thessaly said: “The limited amount of milk available increases production costs and makes it more difficult to maintain the current volume of feta cheese on the market.”

Another sheep farmer near Kadica, Tassos Manakas, saw his 873-head flock culled on 9 October.

Now he sits in a small room in the barn all day. “The store is closed,” he said bitterly.

Mr. Manakas walked past the empty metal feeders and the milking parlor, now covered in cobwebs. “I used to come in in the morning and hear the animals bleating and pet them.

“I was here the day they were slaughtered. If you cut me that day, I wouldn’t bleed.”

He was thoughtfully flipping through a government document containing a table of numbers.

Affected farmers will receive compensation of between 132 and 220 euros per sheep, depending on the age of the sheep. Farmers responded that the payments were nowhere near enough to cover 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 Caprine Pox was not established until late October – a full 14 months after the first case was detected.

Meanwhile, no lockdown zones were set up in areas where the first cases were recorded in late summer 2024, and critics say the national veterinary service is severely understaffed.

Meanwhile, some farmers have been arrested for illegally transporting animals by truck into areas thought to be disease-free. Local reports said infected animals were buried in fields without notifying authorities.

A spokesman for the Department of Rural Development and Food told the BBC: “We have implemented our sheeppox eradication program in line with the European Agreement from the outset.

“The result is almost zero cases by the spring of 2025. The decision to set up a scientific committee in October 2025 was taken under the pressure of one factor – the non-compliance of biosecurity measures by many farmers, leading to a surge in cases.”

Greece’s Supreme Court has now ruled that prosecutors must investigate possible breaches of biosecurity measures, an investigation that many critics say is long overdue.

Across the country, there are still farms operating by 1960s standards – tin shacks, walls of baked earth or cement bricks, and no fences.

The BBC visited one such farm on the outskirts of the city of Larissa in Thessaly. Two dead lambs lay on the ground.

The farmer insists there are no cases of pox on his farm. He refused to allow photos to be taken. “Some of the animals had lumps on their chests. It wasn’t pox, but no one would believe me,” he said.

Sheep and goat farmers in Thessaly are calling for approval for mass vaccination of their cattle, saying this is how Bulgaria and Türkiye solve the problem.

Such vaccinations are allowed in emergencies According to EU rules, Farmers have put a lot of pressure on the government to get vaccines from the committee’s available stocks.

However, the Greek government responded that mass vaccination could lead to Greece being classified as endemic for the disease, which would impose restrictions on the export of sheep and goat milk, especially sheep cheese. Greek authorities also stressed that there is currently no certified goatpox vaccine.

Professor Gougulis noted that existing older vaccines are effective in countries where pox is endemic, but “are not tools to eradicate (the disease)”. “They do not completely prevent infection and the virus can continue to spread among vaccinated people.”

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

Members of the National Sheep and Goat Pox Control Committee recently revealed to reporters that the number of livestock farmers across the country may have been illegally vaccinated as many as one million animals. This distorts the epidemiological picture and makes disease control more difficult.

But many livestock farmers are angry at officials’ assumptions. They called it an arbitrary calculation and accused the scientific committee of jeopardizing feta exports.

Haris Seskliotis, a farmer in the village of Rizomilos near Volos, listened to all this with deep concern. An infection case was detected on his farm, resulting in the preventive culling of 700 sheep.

This is the second time his farm has been destroyed, following the devastating floods in Thessaly in 2023.

“It’s very cruel,” he told the BBC as he walked through an empty sheep pen.

There are piles of hay bales lying around that were originally meant for the sheep but now sit unused in the farm yard and will soon rot.

Mr. Thesclitis is not the kind of farmer to sit around and count his wounds. “I am thinking of setting up a new unit with my son to fatten calves,” he said. “We learned nothing but raising cattle.”