Halloumi, Officials Want Less Cow’s Milk in Mix

Halloumi, a rubbery Cypriot delicacy that doesn’t melt when fried or grilled, is in culinary fashion. Demand is booming across Europe and beyond. But arguments are erupting about new government efforts to control the official recipe.

This August, after decades of lax regulation, the Cypriot government decided that halloumi should contain at least 51% sheep and goat milk. That has caused a stink among cattle farmers and large halloumi producers who have been making the cheese sometimes with more than 90% cow’s milk.

“It’s a kind of civil war,” says cheesemaker Yiannos Pittas, whose family owns the eponymous dairy company that supplies overseas supermarket chains like Tesco and Whole Foods.

Agriculture Minister Sophocles Aletraris says the new law is necessary to get halloumi protected by the European Union as a Cypriot specialty similar to French Champagne or Greek Feta and distinguish it from copycat cheeses produced elsewhere. Guarding such exports is particularly important now that Cyprus has been sucked into Europe’s financial crisis and is seeking a bailout.

“The only thing that still moves here is halloumi cheese,” says Mr. Pittas, a rotund 59-year-old who was born on the premises of his family cheese factory in the south of Nicosia. Between 2001 and 2010, halloumi exports from Cyprus swelled to €54 million, or about $70 million, from just €13 million. The U.K. and Germany are the biggest importers of cow-milk-heavy halloumi, while tariffs in the U.S. benefit sales of cheese made from goat and sheep milk.

Most Cypriots agree that, traditionally, halloumi was made from sheep and goat milk, since there were few cows on the island until they were brought over by the British in the 20th century. But as demand grew, industrial cheesemakers began pouring more of the cheaper and more-plentiful cow’s milk into their caldrons.

That development has curdled the tempers of traditional halloumi producers. “Supermarket halloumi is for poor people,” sneers Androulla Kostouri, a small artisanal cheesemaker. “If you fry it, it gets stuck in the pan.” The 67-year-old has been making halloumi from pure goat and sheep milk since she was 12 years old.

Many other Cypriots feel the same way. Mr. Aletraris, the agriculture minister, calls cow-milk-heavy halloumi “plastic cheese,” and even Mr. Pittas has his own stack of matured goat and sheep milk halloumi in the cellar of his factory.

But the government’s arguments for more sheep and goat milk have holes like Swiss cheese, according to Nikos Papakyriakou, general manager of the Pancyprian Organization of Cattle Farmers. His organization controls 80% of the cow’s milk production on the island. “The real enemy of halloumi is the Cyprus government,” he says.

The cattle farmers pin their hopes on a 1563 letter, in which Elias of Pesaro, a Venetian stranded on Cyprus because of an outbreak of the plague in Syria, describes “native cheese…made from a mixture of the milk of sheep, goat and cow.”

“This is not true!” Nasa Patapiou, a historian at the Cyprus Research Centre in Nicosia, says of Pesaro’s claim. “He’s a traveler who came here for a very short time and he wrote many things that were not true, because he did not like Cyprus.”

Earlier in his letter, Pesaro describes Cypriots as “liars, cheats, thieves”—one of several unflattering descriptions that have raised questions over the information contained in the document.

Ms. Patapiou, meanwhile, has traced halloumi back to a 1557 manuscript, in which a future Venetian doge described a Cypriot cheese called “calumi,” which was made in May, just when goat and sheep milk is plentiful.

Historical rifts aside, both cheese camps agree that there are too few goats and sheep in Cyprus to produce sufficient milk for the booming industry.

“We don’t have enough milk now!” says George Petrou, the president of the cheesemakers’ association, and owner of Alambra, Cyprus’s second-biggest halloumi factory, behind Pittas.

Mr. Petrou says even a compromise proposal from the government—allowing the percentage of sheep and goat milk to drop to between 23% and 35% depending on the season until the EU has granted the cheese protected status—would hurt the industry. “What we built in 30 years we now destroy in one day,” he says.

Cyprus isn’t an obvious dairy exporter. By May, it is 80 degrees at midday. Summer gets hotter. Shepherds like Panayiotis Constantinou rise before dawn to milk their animals and take them out to graze on the few leaves that sprout through the sun-baked ground. His 600 sheep and 30 goats can produce up to 100 gallons of milk per day. But between July and early November, when many of the females are pregnant, production drops to just 30 gallons.

Mr. Constantinou, president of one of Cyprus’ six goat and sheep farmers unions, says the history of the shepherd is different from that of the wealthier cattle farmers: “One is hard and one is soft.”

In an attempt to protect their slice of the industry, cattle farmers have taken precautions. Earlier this year, they bought their own halloumi company. Its name: Halloumis Poc Farmers Milk Industry Ltd. They have also applied for several European trademarks: For example, Halloumis Packaged Cheese. The “s” at the end of the name is what is different.

Mr. Pittas calls that move “a dirty trick.” “It’s like having ‘Champagne’ and ‘Champagnes’,” he says.

But the cattle farmers haven’t given up yet, warns Mr. Papakyriakou. “We believe in our power—and in our lawyers and in the courts.”