Türkiye issues 2015 Turkish Food Codex Cheese Communiqué

In 2015 Türkiye's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry issued the Turkish Food Codex Cheese Communiqué, a regulation (tebliğ) that set out how cheese could be produced, described and sold on the domestic market. The Turkish Food Codex is the country's body of binding food-safety and quality standards, aligned in large part with European Union practice.

The communiqué defined the main cheese categories, such as white, kashar and processed cheese, and set requirements for raw materials, production methods and composition. It also covered labelling and the conditions under which products could carry a given cheese name, giving inspectors a common reference for checking what was sold in shops and markets.

It mattered because cheese is a staple of Turkish diets and a large industry, from small dairies to national brands. Disputes over imitation products, such as those made with vegetable fat in place of milk fat, and over misleading labels made clear rules a public concern. The 2015 text remained the main legal framework for cheese until the authorities replaced it with a new communiqué, which is the subject of the latest coverage.