The Shepherds of Transylvania
Since joining the European Union last year rural Romanian culture has had to withstand a number of modernizing regulations; rules that are expected of any EU member state. These span from the limit of home made brandy one can produce to the way in which animals are slaughtered.
But the sheep farmers of the Carpathian Mountain peaks have been dealt the hardest blow under laws that will force them to conform to EU standards of dairy production. They have been told to produce their famous cheese and milk using modern sterilisation, cooling and transportation equipment or otherwise face prosecution from government officials.
The equipment and infrastructure they are now expected to have cost huge amounts of money, funds that the shepherds simply don’t have. As a result many are reported to have already abandoned their livelihoods and migrated to central Europe in search of other work. Many farmers fear that the government is making a concerted effort to wipe out smallholders and create a number of ‘super-farms’. Such actions would also open the Romanian market up to imports.
The shepherds’ work begins in the spring as they gather their borrowed flocks from livestock owners in nearby villages before heading up to mountainous pastures for the summer months. There they will eek out an existence in tiny wooden shacks without electricity or running water among the bears and wolves of the Transylvanian peaks. They produce the cheese on site, storing it in barrels or wrapped in tree bark before travelling to surrounding village markets by donkey and cart to sell their produce. This is how they have always done it and many Romanians are eager to keep it that way, claiming it is part of their culture and tradition; a view that the head of the Food Safety Inspectorate in Bucharest has labelled as ‘extremist traditionalism’.
Although issued with a deadline of last December the shepherds continue to work until, they say, there is a suitable timetable and plan put in place by the government. They seem to have been given amnesty for the mean time but it is hard to believe Brussels will back down for long.
© Ivor Prickett
