Feta cheese – Greece's "white gold" – is under threat after a deadly "goat plague" resurfaced in Europe.
The "highly contagious" peste des petits ruminants (PPR) virus was detected for the first time in Greece on 11 July in the central Thessaly region, but spread quickly across the country and into neighbouring Romania, said Euronews. More than 300,000 animals have since been tested and about 9,000 euthanised.
Greek authorities have temporarily banned the movement or slaughter of sheep and goats to stem the spread, and the EU has adopted "urgent procedures" for Greece and Romania. But the disease poses a "significant threat" to the production of Greece's trademark feta cheese, "a cornerstone of its economy".
PPR was first discovered in Ivory Coast in 1942, but has since spread around the world to more than 70 countries. It does not affect humans, but it can kill between 80% and 100% of infected goats and sheep.
At the moment the risk of PPR reaching the UK is "negligible", according to an assessment by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) quoted by the Mail Online. Importing live animals from Greece was banned after a separate disease – goat pox – was detected last October.
But cheese and milk are still being imported from Greece, including nearly 4,000 tonnes between 1 May and 12 July. About 1.6% of those products were unpasteurised; i.e. they have not been heat-treated to kill pathogens. "We will continue to monitor the situation as this is an important exotic disease that will be a concern for the EU," said Defra. | 
