Banning Imports/Junk Food in Vanuatu
Cookies and sugary drinks served at government meetings are about to go away. So are imported noodles and canned fish served in tourist bungalows.
Taking their place? Local coconuts, lobsters and lime juice.
While many governments struggle to ban soda to curb obesity, the tiny Torba Tourism Council in the remote Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is planning to outlaw all imported food at government functions and tourist establishments across the province’s 13 inhabited islands.
Provincial leaders hope to turn them instead into havens of local organic food. The ban, scheduled to take effect in March, comes as many Pacific island nations struggle with an obesity crisis brought on in part by the overconsumption of imported junk food.
“We want to ban all other junk food from this province,” Luke Dini, the council’s chairman and a retired Anglican priest, said in a telephone interview from Torba. He said the province had about 9,000 residents and got fewer than 1,000 tourists a year, mostly Europeans.
Here are a couple thoughts:
- If the measures under consideration are a ban, or partial ban, on imported food -- either on sale/distribution or importation -- they would clearly violate WTO obligations. If, instead, the measures are a ban on particular foods for which there is evidence that they are unhealthy, regardless of their country of origin, the measures are unlikely to violate WTO obligations.
- I'm not sure why you need to impose a formal ban on imported food at government functions. The government agencies involved can just choose to serve lobsters and coconuts.
- The amount of trade here must be quite small. I'm not sure there would be enough incentive for anyone to bring a WTO complaint.
- If the Torba Tourism Council wants to fly me to Vanuatu to consult about all this, I will make time in my schedule.