The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in an email on April 8 that new admissibility requirements for commodities originating from Greece have been set up in CFIA’s Automated Import Reference System (AIRS).

WHY IT MATTERS: Data from Greece’s tourism industry show over 300,000 arrivals in that country from Canada in 2024 alone.

According to the World Organization for Animal Health, Greece began reporting cases of foot-and-mouth disease on March 15 with nine infected cattle at a farm on the island of Lesvos, marking the country’s first such cases since 1994. Its most recent cases, in sheep and one cow on the same island, were reported March 29.

Greece’s cases so far have all occurred on farms in the northern regions of that island, in the Aegean Sea off the west coast of Turkey. So far, 438 animals in total have been confirmed infected.

The findings make Greece the fifth European Union member country currently under foot-and-mouth restrictions from Canada. Hungary, Slovakia and Cyprus all reported cases last year, while Bulgaria is the lone EU member country “not usually considered free” of foot-and-mouth disease.

Germany regained disease-free status last month, while CFIA’s restrictions on Austria were lifted last September.

While findings of the disease in Greece are so far limited to Lesvos, Canada’s new restrictions apply to the entire country, unlike certain other nations such as Brazil, Argentina and Peru in which CFIA classifies some but not all provinces or states as free of foot-and-mouth disease.

What products are prohibited?

At-risk commodities covered by Canada’s import ban include live animals and germplasm; animal products and byproducts; uncooked meat and meat products; raw milk and milk products made from raw milk, such as unpasteurized cheese; unprocessed manure; laboratory material; blood products; livestock feed and equipment that has been in contact with affected animals; raw or unprocessed pet foods; raw hides, skins, wool, antlers, horns, hooves; and any other non-heat-treated products or byproducts from vulnerable animal species.

Species vulnerable to foot-and-mouth disease include hogs, cattle, bison, sheep, goats, camelids (llamas, alpacas) and cervids (deer, elk, moose) among others.

CFIA’s restrictions apply to any at-risk products dating as far back as 28 days before the first symptoms were detected in an affected country.

Foot-and-mouth disease, according to CFIA, is a viral disease characterized by symptoms including blister-like sores on the tongue and lips, in the mouth, on the teats and between the hooves; foot lesions, accompanied by acute lameness and reluctance to move; and loss of appetite or milk production. The virus can spread between animals through direct, indirect or airborne transmission.

Canada is free of the disease and has not reported any cases of the disease in livestock since 1952, when an outbreak in southeastern Saskatchewan is believed to have originated with a visitor from an infected farm in Germany, carrying the virus either on clothes or an infected sausage.

Advice for farmers visiting Greece

Canadians are still free to travel to Greece, but CFIA recommends they avoid visiting farms when doing so. Travellers who do visit farms should make sure clothes and footwear worn during those visits are free from soil or manure. Footwear should be cleaned and disinfected, and dry-cleaning of the clothes worn is recommended.

Travellers should also avoid contact with susceptible animals, including farm and zoo animals and wildlife, for 14 days after returning to Canada.

For farmers who travel to Greece, contact with farm animals is not recommended for five days upon return to Canada, when “strict personal decontamination measures” are applied to clothes and footwear, CFIA says.

Travellers also must declare all food products upon arrival in Canada. Generally, CFIA says, meat and dairy products from foot-and-mouth infected countries won’t be allowed, but foods that are “cooked, shelf-stable, commercially prepared and hermetically sealed” may be.

Protesters deployed thousands of trucks and tractors in at least 20 blockades across the country, local media said. Police fired tear gas at a group of protesting farmers who threw stones and forced their way onto the runway at Heraklion airport in Crete, halting air traffic.

Another group near the Chania airport in Crete smashed the windows of police vehicles with their shepherd’s crooks and stones. Police officials said those involved had been identified and would be charged.

Greek farmers face a 600 million euro (US$700 million) shortfall in EU aid and other payments after a corruption scandal in which some farmers, aided by state employees, faked land ownership to qualify for payouts. Ongoing audits have slowed subsequent disbursements.

The delays to funding come just as farmers and stock breeders struggle with an outbreak of sheep pox that has led to hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats being culled.

“We don’t have help, climate change has influenced production a great deal, all of this with the (corruption) scandal — people who have nothing to do with the profession are getting enormous amounts,” said one farmer, Prokopis Bandzis, who protested on the island of Lesbos.

“I want there to be justice. Those involved with the illegal subsidies need to account for (their actions).”

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, under criticism for the scandal, urged farmers to end the blockades and said the government is open to dialogue. The government has acknowledged the payment delays and pledged to distribute 3.7 billion euros (US$4.3 billion) to farmers this year.

Yet protests continue. In the north on Monday, farmers disrupted traffic at the Promachonas and Kipi border crossings with Bulgaria and Turkey respectively. A customs official at the Kipi checkpoint said that only passenger cars and trucks with sensitive goods were allowed to cross.

Roadblocks were also set up in southwestern and central Greece, where farmers have said they aim to block the Volos port this week. Hundreds of farmers had blocked the entrance to the port of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos.

— Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Angeliki Koutantou and Elias Marcou

The products are more effective, a dozen farmers across the Thessaly plain said. They are also potentially more harmful: laboratory tests shared with Reuters show the bottles contain pesticides banned in the European Union for several years because of suspected risks to humans or the environment.

The situation in Greece, explained by farmers, elected officials, law enforcement officers and pesticide industry experts, is echoed across the EU, where authorities say the use of banned and counterfeit pesticides is higher than ever.

This comes as the bloc is seeking to reduce even the use of permitted crop aids as part of its green transition.

At least 14 per cent of pesticides used on EU fields today are illegal, up from around 10 per cent in 2015, EU data shows. In some areas of Greece, that number hits 25 per cent, said Greece’s Crop Protection Association ESYF, which represents pesticide companies in the country.

A record 2,040 tonnes of illegal pesticides were seized by police in Europe in 2022, the latest available data by Europol from an EU-wide operation shows, four times higher than in 2019.

The problem is likely even larger because so much smuggling goes undetected, said authorities in Greece and in several of Europe’s main agricultural producers: France, Germany and Spain.

Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras told Reuters Greece was working to protect public health, support farmers, and promote safe, legal agricultural production.

“The fight against illegality is a priority for us,” he said.

The EU Commission did not respond to Reuters’ questions.

Farmers’ livelihoods threatened

Greek farmers are vulnerable to the illegal pesticide trade because of the lingering impacts of the 2010-18 financial crisis and climate change, which has parched their land and brought pest outbreaks.

Pesticides can amount to up to 50 per cent of annual costs, some farmers said. A litre of a popular Greek insecticide costs up to 380 euros (C$607.62). A counterfeit can be found on the black market for 200-230 euros, they added.

The high prices threaten livelihoods in Thessaly, a key breadbasket in central Greece, which produces apples, almonds, grains and cotton. Orchards in the region have been abandoned as farmers seek work elsewhere.

“To survive, a farmer must become a criminal?” said Giorgos Zeikos, a fourth-generation apple farmer who heads a cooperative in the village of Agia.

“It’s one thing to break the law to profit; it’s another to do it just to survive.”

Zeikos said he has refused offers to use illegal pesticides. But farmers in six villages across the hot valley said they, or their relatives or neighbors, had tried them.

Another temptation is the perceived effectiveness of the illegal pesticides.

On a break from the fields, farmers in the cotton-producing village of Metamorfosi recounted how older, now-banned pesticides were so potent that birds would not fly over their fields after they sprayed. Now, they said, they apply twice the recommended dose of the legal product.

George Pontikas, president of ESYF, the crop protection association, dismissed farmers’ claims that pesticides were expensive and inefficient. He said authorities were not doing enough to punish lawbreakers.

“Someone who poisons our food supply to make a profit should be treated as a felon,” said Pontikas, who is also chief executive of the Greek branch of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta.

Illicit chemical trade

The products are smuggled into Greece overland from Bulgaria in spare tires or ferried on rafts traffickers use to bring migrants into Europe from Turkey, farmers and officials said.

In one village, an almond farmer said he once drove to Bulgaria and bought five boxes of counterfeit products for himself and his neighbours. In another, a farmer said locals act as intermediaries for a man known as “the Bulgarian”. When he is expected, they take orders from others in the village.

Farmers pay in cash, spray at night and burn the empty containers to erase all evidence, they said.

“If you want it, you’ll find it,” said Thanasis Kostis, a farmer in Metamorfosi. Kostis said he has not used illegal products.

Farmers who told Reuters they had used the illegal pesticides asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from authorities.

Bulgaria’s Food Safety Agency said it has stepped up inspections since October to combat the trade and use of unauthorized products.

Turkey’s Trade Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The trade is increasingly structured, resembling organized economic crime, a senior Greek police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Roles are divided into import, storage and distribution. Meanwhile, police act largely on tip-offs, three police and industry officials told Reuters.

Dimitris Stavridis, head of Thessaly’s General Directorate of Regional Agricultural Economy, acknowledged that more checks could be carried out in farmers’ markets but said that some regions struggled with understaffing.

Health risks

Seized products go to the Benaki Phytopathological Institute in Athens for analysis. Many arrive with Bulgarian, Turkish, or handwritten labels. Some counterfeits look like EU-approved products but may contain harmful substitutes, including unknown solvents. Under Greek law, only pesticides with Greek labels are legal.

Greek police and Europol say many of these substances originate in China.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email it has always asked companies to abide by the laws in the countries in which they operate and that Beijing is willing to strengthen cooperation with the EU on customs enforcement.

The EU bans have been partly due to what regulators identified as health risks, including links to liver, kidney and lung damage, or as possible carcinogens. However, some of these chemicals are used legally in other countries, including the United States.

Over a dozen banned pesticides – some since 2009 – were detected in Greece alone in 2024, tests seen by Reuters show.

“This is serious,” said Thessaly Governor Dimitris Kouretas, a toxicology professor, referring to research on the possible health impact.

In the past year, 10 banned pesticides were detected in Greek produce including olives, cherries, tomatoes, grapes and oranges, Agriculture Ministry data shows.

While the World Health Organization says consumer risk from low pesticide levels is minimal, farmers using illegal chemicals may face greater danger.

In the early 2000s, respiratory physicians at Larissa University Hospital in Thessaly observed that many patients who smoked and were exposed to pesticides were developing a rare form of lung scarring. In 2006, their published findings alongside similar research in France, helped to formally recognize a disease now known as Combined Pulmonary Fibrosis and Emphysema (CPFE).

“Nearly all such patients exposed to both smoking and pesticides developed this distinct entity,” said doctor Ilias Dimeas.

Elsewhere in Greece’s farming regions, doctors say they have seen a rise in respiratory diseases in recent years potentially linked to pesticide exposure and are beginning to take note of their patients’ occupational history.

Farmers greet the risks with a shrug.

“All pesticides have consequences,” said Kostis, the farmer in Metamorfosi. “I had a mask, but this year I haven’t worn it at all.”

— Additional reporting by Alexandros Avramidis in Thessaly; Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt; Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris, Emma Pinedo in Madrid, Georgi Slavov in Sofia, Kate Abnett in Brussels, Joe Cash in Beijing and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara.

As they drove through the streets of the capital they honked their horns to cheers and waves from passersby. Dozens of tractors parked in front of parliament and more were set to join.

“Livestock farming died today,” read a banner on one tractor with a black coffin attached to its front.

The protest echoes grievances in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy, where farmers have staged similar demonstrations.

“No farmers, no food, no future,” a banner on a tractor in Athens read.

Greek farmers’ unions have been in negotiations with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ conservative government for weeks, but say the measures announced so far don’t go far enough to meet their concerns.

“We are coming to Athens right now to fight for a better tomorrow,” said farmer Konstantinos Katselis.

“Everything is very expensive,” he said. “Petrol, fertilizer.”

At the last toll booths on the national highway some 30 km outside the capital, farmers waved Greek flags and cheered each other on as they passed through.

Hundreds of farmers with about 150 tractors were expected to join the rally, scheduled for 1630 GMT, and try to pile pressure on the government, which has already offered discounts on power bills and a one-year extension of a tax rebate for agricultural diesel to the end of 2024.

On Monday night, farmers lined up their tractors and pickups along highways as they gathered at a meeting point in central Greece where they spent the night before heading to Athens.

“There are many problems, most of all the fuel and the energy costs,” said one of the protesting farmers, Christos, in the central Greek town of Kastro.

“Last year was catastrophic for farmers, we did not produce grapes, we did not produce olive oil, we produced a bit of cotton but it was bought for nothing.”

On Tuesday morning, dozens of farmers arrived by boat at the port of Piraeus from the southern island of Crete. More farmers were expected to arrive by bus from other areas across Greece.

The government reiterated on Monday that it is willing to discuss a more permanent tax rebate scheme in the future, but it had no fiscal room for any further concessions this year. Greece has been recovering from a decade-long financial crisis.

“We have nothing more to give,” Mitsotakis said during an interview with Greek Star TV on Monday evening.

“I think farmers acknowledge this and know very well that the government has probably exceeded even their expectations, especially on the power bills issue.”

He said the rally was expected to be largely symbolic, but farmers appeared determined to push for more concessions.

“Everyone needs to stand together, because everyone is going to win from our fight – not just us,” farmer Spyros Hatzis said.

–Reporting for Reuters by Angelos Tsatsis, Giorgos Moutafis, Alkis Konstantinidis, Renee Maltezou.