The agriculture ministry intends to impose stricter penalties on those not conforming with halloumi specifications, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said on Tuesday.
Panayiotou briefed the House agriculture committee on the problems arising regarding the marketing of PDO (protected designation of origin) halloumi, saying she was not satisfied with the existing legislation, as it did not provide the tools for keeping producers in line.
The minister said she was in contact with the law commissioner to make penalties stricter.
“By the end of the year we hope to have drafted the first text for the legal audit,” she said.
Panayiotou admitted there was “a very serious problem outside Cyprus” and that the authorities had utilised the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) and filed reports for more than a dozen European countries in 2024.
She said results had been positive and halloumi not meeting the specifications had been taken off the shelves.
The Law Office representative said that after an EU court decision, an appeal filed by Cypriot companies against the PDO had been dismissed, however an appeal is now pending at the EU court.
In Cyprus, the representatives said, there were appeals at the administrative court against a ministerial decree for the ratio of milk and some penalties imposed by the commerce ministry.
The representative added that producers in the north “cannot do anything they wish” and that there was only one member state producing PDO halloumi and that was the Republic of Cyprus.
