Cheesed-off farmers win small victory in battle for the ġbejna

For more than 10 years, the small-batch ġbejna has been an outlaw.
On joining the European Union in 2004, Malta, like all other Member States, was made to adopt wide-ranging health and safety legislation governing, among other things, food production.

The laws set stringent sanitary requirements that small producers have had difficulty keeping up with – the need to purchase large stainless steel processing equipment or costly refrigeration and storage set-ups sounded great to legislators in Brussels but less so to the small-time farmers making cheese in rural Gozo.
Herders with relatively small flocks of sheep were quick to tell officials they would have to face winding down their production of soft and hard ġbejniet – small rounds of cheese – if the EU clamped down. 
Malta was not alone, and other Member States faced similar problems, such as Greece with the production of a traditional form of feta cheese.
So the Fenech Adami administration, and later the government headed by former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi, put their gears in motion and started the process of applying for a derogation – a legal exemption which would allow the farmers, who were already ‘on the lamb’, to...