Cheese for cats

For months the EU has been putting pressure on Romanian cheese producers to use pasteurised milk in their products. That could mean the ruin of many producers, comments Capital newspaper. "I told a farmer in Sibiu about the trick used in Poland to circumvent EU regulations. When some Polish cheese producers with firm customer bases heard that selling their traditional products would soon be forbidden, they put up signs saying: 'Cheese for Cats'. Their old customers knew what that meant, and the producers were able to get around the controls. ... The countries of the new Europe try to preserve their traditions by ... hoodwinking the European bureaucrats. ... But that doesn't mean everything Europe demands of us is senseless. Farmers have become uncompetitive by sticking to their old habits. Before 1989 a farmer could live for a year on the money he made by slaughtering a few pigs at Christmas and selling three on the market. .... [Today] he wants the state to subsidise his production so he can get by on the sale of a few ecologically raised pigs. That is no longer possible. ... Farmers must learn to rethink their strategies."

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