Most Favoured Nation: Foie Gras

To ban or not to ban

Welcome to the 67th edition of Most Favoured Nation. The full post is for paid subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial below.

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I’m just a simple lad from South Wales. I’m also fairly unobservant. I know a fair bit about international trade, but little else. All of which is to say that there are quite a few things everyone knows, that I don’t. Which sometimes leads me to make up alternative explanations for why something has happened, or not.

Take foie gras. Until my late 20s I was aware there was something called foei gras and that for some reason it was controversial. I also knew that some people wanted to ban imports of foie gras. I reasoned that perhaps it was an invasive plant blight, similar to ash dieback and that people didn’t want to import it because it might wipe out plants … or something.

Anyhow it turns out that this explanation was very wrong. Foie gras is a type of goose pate, and its controversial because it requires the forcible over-feeding of geese. You live and learn.

For a long while Foie gras has been illegal to produce in the UK. But you can import it. Within the EU, banning the import of foie gras was particularly tricky, given it would require restricting internal market trade.

But some were hoping that, what with Brexit, the UK would now move to ban imports of foie gras. And the government was kinda considering it … but has now reportedly changed its mind.

“Why? “you may ask. It’s probably one, or a combo, of the following:

• Banning things is the sort of thing nanny states do. Consumers should be free to choose what they do and do not eat.

• A foie gras import ban could lead to a WTO challenge against the UK [by France/EU], although it is not a given the UK would lose given the ban would be non-discriminatory (it would just be extending the domestic ban to imports) and there is a potential public morals argument to be made. [I’m hoping Lorand Bartels might chip in on this in the comments].

• Some people in government really enjoy eating foie gras

Anyway, we now at least know where everyone stands. Rather than the UK not banning foie gras imports because the EU won’t allow it, the UK is not banning foie gras imports because it doesn’t want to.

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