The British have often had a half-serious rivalry with our nearest continental neighbors about how we eat. The French might eat horses and frogs’ legs, but the British boil vegetables to death and drink sweetened pond water out of a china cup. The French protect artisanal cheese processes; the British, meanwhile, devote TV segments to smothering dry toast with cheddar and then grilling it. Naturally, each country jokingly considers the other’s ways barbaric.

When it comes to cheese, the French have been the ones claiming superiority. Perhaps that is, until now. Comté, the hard cheese from the Jura, found in supermarkets up and down the UK, is in the news this week because the cheese’s exacting standards are to be relaxed. It’s protected by Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP), a European designation that specifies where the grass comes from, which breeds of cow eat it, and the particular methods used to turn their milk into approved Comté. This year, due to drought, there isn’t enough grass, so a rule requiring feed to be produced entirely on the farm has been suspended.

Up until a few days ago, the argument in favor of the AOP designation, made by wise producers on behalf of ignorant consumers, was that this chain of production was so sacred that tiny alterations in the origin of the feed would destroy the final flavor of the cheese we eat: that Comté’s distinctly creamy and nutty flavors were so sensitive and precious that they required collective intervention to protect against evil competitors, at home and abroad, who sought to destroy local traditions. Clearly, that argument held only for as long as it was convenient, and now the specification looks as though it exists to protect the profits of the producers. This now completely different cheese is, by legal transubstantiation, the same as before.

I sympathize with farmers whose cows need feeding, and I think flexibility in the face of changing local climatic effects is a good thing. Making traditional cheese shouldn’t be a stubborn death wish. But protected-origin schemes are attractive because they wrap protectionism in bucolic, autochthonous or agrarian romance. Picture a weather-beaten cheesemaker, surrounded by three generations of smiling descendants, several happy dogs and one contemptuous cat, preserving a sacred local craft against the horrors of modernity. Sounds like the kind of local tour a good modern liberal would pay top dollar to visit for an afternoon, or watch on an Anthony Bourdain-esque TV show.

The problem is that the same system creates cartels that cooperate to shut everyone else out, raising prices and jealously guarding their own profits. Worse, this racket has the protection of the sovereign government, along with all the lobbyists, middlemen and trade bodies that live off the law without creating anything new.

Cheddar contains another option. Its method grew spontaneously out of Somerset and the aging caves of Cheddar Gorge. That was until a bright spark called Joseph Harding invented cheddarification, a process that reproduces that sharp, nutty taste and chalky texture without having to own a damp cavity in some faraway, albeit charming, valley in the middle of England. Now Americans, Canadians and whoever else likes that taste can make it.

Today we have an enormous democratic spectrum of cheddar, from cheap stuff resembling a shiny yellow brick to crumbly, fragrant farmhouse cheese. Both exist alongside each other, and we choose between them with our taste buds and preferences, far away from the intervention of Angela Eagle, the current Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

In the long run, as the climate changes and the world’s middle classes decide they don’t want to be slaves to nature’s whims, this is better for everyone. Comté’s drought exemption has therefore done us a favor. The cheese will survive; the mythology, however, looks a little curdled.