In the culinary world, cheese—“milk’s leap toward immortality” as it’s famously been called—is one of the original forms of conservation, an ingenious way to use up surplus that would otherwise spoil. The trouble is, most Ontario farmers aren’t allowed to make cheese from the milk of their own herd, or from the dairy down the lane. In accordance with the Milk Act, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario enforces a Byzantine set of rules that control the supply and protect the price of cow’s milk. Anyone wishing to make cheese must first apply for quotas (a percentage of the provincial dairy production and supply, even if the farmer has a herd of his own). Once granted, the milk must be bought from the provincial pool.

This has several consequences. If a farmer produces more milk than his quota allows, he must pour it down the drain—a colossal waste. To simply receive the milk, cheese makers must spend thousands to comply with the many requirements (among them, a large docking bay) that can make small-scale production prohibitively expensive. (Hence the slow growth of our local cheese culture.) Worse still, most artisans are unable to control the milk source, which means they’re unable to make a truly unique curd.

“Cheese is special because it represents the grasses of this place, the milk of this particular cow,” says Andy Shay, a self-described cheese guru and owner of the popular delivery box service Shay Cheese. Of his five ripe-and-ready selections—which, for $70, arrive packed in Styrofoam with extensive tasting notes and wine suggestions—he makes a point of including at least three Canadian rounds.

The great irony is that dairy farmers are losing an economic opportunity by “protecting” production. We have all the makings of a healthy cheese industry: a strong farming tradition—fertile pastures, quality milk—and a multitude of cheese-eating cultures. You can spend days at Toronto’s best cheese counters nibbling on farmhouse manchego, raw-milk triple crème and ash-ripened chèvre without ever encountering local product. “Everyone is eating artisanal cheese these days,” says Petra Cooper, co-founder and chair of the Ontario Cheese Society. “Just not ours.” Cooper, a former publishing exec, plunged into curds and whey after she and her husband built a second home in Prince Edward County.