Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Renegade cheese maker wins award

A cheese maker that the Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board tried to shut down has won the American Cheese Society competition with her Celtic Blue Reserve cheese.

She won over almost 1,800 other entries.

Margaret Morris of Glengarry County in Eastern Ontario has since made peace with the marketing board by taking advantage of its program for innovators in the dairy-processing industry. Before that happened in 2008, she was deemed illegal because she did not own plant supply quota.

She recalls days when marketing board officials had cars blockading her home, keeping her from buying milk.

The milk board uses plant supply quota to ration supplies among processing plants.

She makes cheeses that are so good that she was invited to dine with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife. The cheeses that she and her partner, Wilma Klein-Swormink, make are now provided to Canadian embassies around the world; they are routinely sold out.

In fact, it took them almost two years to catch up to orders after their Lankaster variety won the international competition in the United Kingdom in 2013.