ST-BERNADIN — Remy Levac refuses to shut down his mobile cheese factory, a covered trailer that makes house calls. The innovative Levac brings his cheese factory to you, parking it next to the dairy barn to get access to the bulk tank. Open the trailer doors and you’ll find Remy inside stirring a warm vat of 500 litres of milk to make cheese curds.

He’s been ordered by Ministry of Natural Resources enforcement officers to shut down his business or face a $2,000 fine for operating a processing plant without a licence.

Farmers Forum found Levac still in business at a dairy farm east of Ottawa in late January. "I can’t accept stopping this," said Levac, as he stirred the whey. "This is a business I have built up."

The problem for Levac is this: he doesn’t pasteurize the milk and in a recent case an Ontario girl got sick after eating the cheese. The Quebec mobile cheese unit that made the cheese immediately shut down.

At the same time, there is no law that clearly prevents Levac from continuing his two year-old business. All sides are looking at this "grey area," said Dairy Farmers of Ontario spokesman Bill Mitchell. Lawyers for DFO and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food are huddling over this issue, he said. "They are close to having a definitive position."

Farmers voluntarily and happily hire Levac to come to their farm to use their over-quota milk that would otherwise be destroyed or used in the farm family’s breakfast cereal. "I believe people have the right to consume the surplus of milk for the family who work on the farm," Levac said. "People can’t buy this cheese. And there’s no law that stops me."

Levac, a dairy farmer who milks 16 cows, said he inquired about regulations before starting his business two years ago and said it was approved by a cheese inspector.

He figures his business is the only one of its kind now operating in Canada.

Levac came close to closing down his business until the Ontario Landowners Assocation took up his cause and told him to shout his plight from the roof tops. Levac hopes the court of public opinion will help his cause.

The mobile cheese unit could fall under three separate regulations, said DFO’s Mitchell. He added that lawyers felt it was safer to shut down the cheese making operation until a legal opinion could be reached.