> PDO regulations absolutely focus precisely on ingredients, process and the final product.
Lots of food types that are not geographic indications have strict requirements on ingredients, process, finished product.
The geographic restriction for "feta" serves no purpose except to favor the producers who lobbied for the geographic indication. You could strip off the geographic restriction, and you'd have a normal food quality regulation.
> I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with cow's milk.
Feta cheese has been made throughout the Eastern Mediterranean for ages, primarily using sheep's and goat's milk. There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta. The historical reason why the geographic indication is limited to Greece is that it was created by the Greek government (i.e., it was a protectionist measure passed by the government to benefit its own cheese-makers). Greece then lobbied the EU to adopt the geographic indication. That's why the PDO is limited to Greece - not because what the Greeks call "feta" is different from cheeses produced in the same way right across the border in Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria or Turkey.
> There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta.
So you insist, but it's clear to me you do this without any substantial knowledge of feta, or the similar cheeses made around the area, other than what a quick googe could tell you.
In truth, it takes rather more than a quick google to realise that what you say is wrong. The other cheeses that are similar to feta and made in the Balkans, Turkey, Romania, etc, are almost always made primarily with cow's milk, sometimes with added goat's milk. Why? Because cow's milk is cheaper. Why? Because cows produce a lot more milk than sheep. Individual cows produce double or triple the amount of milk of individual sheep and cows can be milked all year round whereas sheep are only milked between February and September.
Even in Greece, non-PDO cheeses made in the style of feta (or other PDO cheeses like kasseri) are made with cow's milk, again because it's cheaper because it's more plentiful. More precisely, those non-PDO cow's milk cheeses made in Greece with cow's milk are made with cow's milk imported from nearby countries that have substantially larger dairy cow herds than Greece.
Greeks make most of their cheeses with sheep and goat's milk (pretty much every single Greek PDO cheese is a sheep and goat's milk cheese, except for Metsovone, St. Michali, Kopanisti and Graviera Naxou and the latter two can also be made with sheep and goat's milk). This is actually a very stringent restriction and it gives an easy advantage on price and profitabilty to cheeses made with cow's milk, which is why the most common adulteration of Greek PDO cheeses is with cow's milk imported from Bulgaria, Turkey, etc.
So basically what you say is completely wrong. Greeks are forced to make their cheeses according to the PDO regulations. Everyone else is free to make theirs any old way they want. That's why Greek feta is different than other cheeses in the region. It's the market forces.
You keep making assumptions based on incomplete knowledge of the cheese market and then you state these assumptions with great certainty, even though they are completely wrong. Please don't do that, that's just spreading misinformation.
Lots of food types that are not geographic indications have strict requirements on ingredients, process, finished product.
The geographic restriction for "feta" serves no purpose except to favor the producers who lobbied for the geographic indication. You could strip off the geographic restriction, and you'd have a normal food quality regulation.
> I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with cow's milk.
Feta cheese has been made throughout the Eastern Mediterranean for ages, primarily using sheep's and goat's milk. There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta. The historical reason why the geographic indication is limited to Greece is that it was created by the Greek government (i.e., it was a protectionist measure passed by the government to benefit its own cheese-makers). Greece then lobbied the EU to adopt the geographic indication. That's why the PDO is limited to Greece - not because what the Greeks call "feta" is different from cheeses produced in the same way right across the border in Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria or Turkey.