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Photo by Peter J Thompson/National Post

Perhaps it’s unreasonable to compare Canada to France and other European countries, where certain butters enjoy government-protected production-standards status — just like Champagne, Jamón Ibérico and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Depending on the region, in midrange continental supermarkets you’ll find butters of various shapes and sizes, with different butterfat contents — some higher, and thus better for baking — from cows fed different things and flavoured with salt sourced from particular regions. But our American friends, too, enjoy a more diverse domestic butter market — and vastly superior access to foreign products.

If foreign butter invades Canada it is subject to a whopping 298-per-cent tariff. Even Whole Foods in midtown Toronto offers only a single import: Kiwi Pure, a grass-fed brand from New Zealand, at $11.99 for 250 grams. That’s an eye-watering $22 a pound — and you’ll pay considerably more than that at even higher-end stores.

Meanwhile the most expensive butter sold at Le District, a French food market in Lower Manhattan, is US $10. That gets you 250 grams of Isigny Sainte Mère, an appellation contrôlée considered one of the very finest butters in the world. Other French imports go for as little as US$4.95.

Photo by Peter J Thompson/National Post

Canada has its plucky butter upstarts, though, and Sylvain Charlebois, a business professor at Dalhousie University who studies food production, argues Ontario is leading the pack. Temiskaming Valley butter, made by Thornloe Cheese in Northern Ontario, took the grand prize at this year’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto. It has an exclusive supply of milk from grass-fed cows in the area — most within 25 kilometres of the dairy.