CYPRUS is due to resume in earnest its efforts to register halloumi cheese as a protected designation of origin (PDO), agriculture minister Nicos Kouyialis said yesterday following a meeting with stakeholders.

“The matter of halloumi is a national issue, but at the same time also a tricky one, since we have not managed to register it yet,” Kouyialis said following a meeting with the cattle farmers’ association (POA) in the presence of ministry top brass.

In April last year, Cyprus cheese manufacturers withdrew a PDO application because they disagreed over the type and ratio of milk (cow, sheep, and goat) to be used in its production.

Previous efforts also fell short because of disagreement among milk producing groups.

The PDO law is designed to protect the names of regional foods and to ensure that only products originating in that region can be traded.

The agriculture ministry has previously said that they would file a new PDO application which would include the Turkish name “hellim”.

Kouyiallis said that ministry officials were due to start having meetings with European commission officials to see how the application would proceed but said there were eleven objections, some by Turkish Cypriot producers, that needed to be studied and investigated.

He did not clarify what the objections were.

Kouyiallis said he would take into account stakeholders’ positions but said he was optimistic “that this new effort will bear fruit”.

The Cyprus milk industry organisation owns the trademark for halloumi as of 2000, but not for its Turkish name hellim and is currently trying to appeal an EU general court decision allowing a German company to market “hellim” products.