Your “GREEK-STYLE” Feta May Not Be Greek. And It May Not Be Feta Either.

By Jack Mercer – Rabbit Hole Fisherman

There are two little words on supermarket cheese packets that most of us barely notice: “Greek style”. They look like marketing copy, but they do more than that. They quietly tell you what kind of cheese you’re actually buying, and where the argument over names, origin and identity begins.

Next time you buy feta, don’t put it straight into the trolley. Pick up two packets and turn them over. One might be genuine Greek Feta PDO, made in Greece from sheep’s milk, perhaps with some goat’s milk added. The almost identical-looking block beside it might be Australian-made from cow’s milk.

Both are white and are salty. Both crumble over a salad. They both sit in the same supermarket fridge and, to most of us, both look like feta. But look at the front of the Australian packet and you may find two easily overlooked words: Greek style.

That word “style” is doing a surprising amount of work. It can separate a cheese made in Greece under rules governing its origin, milk and production from an Australian cheese inspired by it but made thousands of kilometres away, often from the milk of a different animal. And there’s another oddity: some Australian packets don’t even spell feta the same way. They call it fetta.

None of this is accidental. Behind one of the most ordinary cheeses in the supermarket is an argument involving Greek farmers, Australian cheesemakers, European food law and international trade negotiations. At the centre of it all is a deceptively simple question: who owns the word “feta”?

To answer that, we first need to understand what feta actually is.

Feta isn’t just a recipe

There is a fundamental difference between saying this cheese is made like feta and saying this cheese is Feta PDO. Within the European Union, feta is registered as a Protected Designation of Origin, or PDO, a status given to foods whose identity is tied to where they come from. Champagne is the obvious comparison. You can make excellent sparkling wine in Tasmania, South Australia or Victoria, but that doesn’t make it Champagne.

Under the European PDO rules, Feta has its own geographical and production requirements. It must be produced in specified areas of Greece, and the milk must come from sheep and goats of breeds traditionally raised in those areas and adapted to local conditions. Genuine Feta PDO can be made entirely from sheep’s milk or from sheep’s milk with goat’s milk added. What you won’t find in genuine Greek Feta PDO is cow’s milk.

The European Commission’s description of Feta PDO links the cheese to Greece’s landscape. Much of the country was historically poorly suited to widespread cattle farming, while sheep and goats could thrive in mountainous, hot and dry conditions. The animals graze on local vegetation, and that combination of breed, feed, environment and traditional cheesemaking became part of the argument that feta belongs to Greece.

Which makes a visit to an Australian supermarket rather revealing.

Turn the packet over

At the time of writing, Coles sells a Greek Feta PDO made in Greece. Read the ingredients and the first two are pasteurised sheep’s milk and pasteurised goat’s milk. Now pick up an Australian-made Greek-style fetta.

Riverina Dairy’s Greek Style Fetta is made in Australia from milk from its own farm at Corowa in New South Wales. Its first ingredient? Pasteurised cow’s milk. It also contains cream, salt, calcium chloride, rennet and cultures. Woolworths’ own Greek Style Fetta is also Australian-made and lists pasteurised cow’s milk as its principal ingredient.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. These are cheeses made in the feta tradition rather than as Feta PDO. But it explains why two blocks of white cheese that appear to be doing exactly the same job can taste and feel quite different. They’re not necessarily made from the same animal’s milk in the first place.

Why does the milk matter?

Cow’s milk, sheep’s milk and goat’s milk aren’t interchangeable raw materials. Their composition differs, and that affects cheesemaking, texture and flavour. Traditional Feta PDO gets much of its character from sheep’s milk, with goat’s milk sometimes contributing to the blend. The European Commission describes genuine feta as salty and slightly acidic, and notes the slightly peppery character associated with the milk used to make it.

An Australian producer using cow’s milk is starting somewhere else. That doesn’t automatically make the resulting cheese inferior. In fact, some people may prefer the smoother or milder result. Riverina Dairy, for example, deliberately adds cream to its cow’s-milk Greek-style fetta and describes the result as having a smooth, creamy mouthfeel alongside the salty tang and crumbly texture consumers expect from this style of cheese.

So when two fetas taste different, it may not simply be that one manufacturer makes “better feta”. You may actually be comparing cheeses made from different milks.

Then there is the brine

The liquid surrounding feta can look like little more than salty packaging water. It isn’t. In traditional feta production, brine is part of making and maturing the cheese.

After the milk is coagulated, the curd is placed into moulds and allowed to drain without pressure. The cheese is removed, cut and salted. Ripening then takes place in stages. During the first stage, brine is added and the cheese is held under controlled temperature and humidity. It then continues maturing under refrigeration. Under the PDO production process described by the European Commission, the total maturation period is at least two months.

That helps explain why feta isn’t simply “white cheese in salty water”. The salt, moisture, cultures, milk and maturation are all involved in producing the cheese we eventually crumble onto dinner.

And that leads to the really contentious part.

Who gets to use the word “Feta”?

For years, Australia and the European Union have disagreed over geographical indications, the names associated with products from particular places. For Australian consumers this can sound like an obscure trade negotiation happening somewhere in Brussels or Canberra. It isn’t. It reaches directly into the supermarket fridge.

Australia and the EU concluded negotiations on a free-trade agreement on 24 March 2026. As part of the negotiated outcome, Australia agreed to protect hundreds of European geographical indications. One of them is Feta.

But Australian feta makers weren’t simply forgotten. The Australian Government says existing producers with a continuous history of making and labelling feta will be able to continue using the term under a grandfathering arrangement once the agreement takes effect. To qualify as a prior user, producers will need to demonstrate continuous, good-faith use for at least five years before the agreement enters into force.

There is an important qualification here. As of October 2026, the Australia-EU agreement has not yet entered into force. Negotiations are finished, but legal checking, signature, parliamentary processes and ratification still have to occur. DFAT says signature is expected in late 2026 or early 2027, followed by the necessary domestic processes.

So this isn’t merely a historical argument. Australia is in the middle of changing the rules.

Which brings us back to “Greek-style”

Those two little words suddenly make considerably more sense. A cheese can borrow the characteristics we associate with Greek feta without claiming to be a Greek product. And the spelling “fetta” gives Australian producers another way of distinguishing their product in the marketplace.

But the most useful distinction for the person standing in front of the supermarket fridge isn’t really the spelling. It’s the ingredient list and country of origin. Pick up the Coles Greek Feta PDO and you’re looking at cheese made in Greece from sheep’s milk and goat’s milk. Pick up Riverina Dairy Greek Style Fetta and you’re looking at an Australian cheese made principally from cow’s milk, with added cream.

They may sit centimetres apart. They may both crumble beautifully over the same salad. And they may both be delicious. But they are not the same cheese.

And perhaps that is what makes the word “style” so useful. Most of us probably walk past it without noticing. Once you know what it means, it tells quite a story.

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