Food Consumption Patterns Part 2

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Enforcement is, need we add, non-existent. Nor are there courts and lawyers competent to
deal with adjudicating relevant cases
Neither MARNDR nor MIC were able or willing to provide the consultants with a single
document that defines the law (the document cited above and included in Annex 16 came
from a secretary acting independently of the Ministry)
Most of the Haitian government websites are, to put it bluntly, facades with nothing behind
them, no data, no downloadable documents. Click a hyperlink or downloadable document
and in the vast majority of cases one gets nothing except perhaps a “site under
construction.’ Associated service provider sites offer little data as well, other than typically
contacts to lawyers or agents with the offer of facilitating access to the market for fees
MIC staff referred the consultant to the “Director” who knew nothing but recommended a
lawyer, saying, ‘he knows’
According to distributors (see contact list) there are zero controls on patents or use of
copyrighted advertisements, for example Spider Man, evident in the “vitamin sticks” from
China (see Figure 30 above)
No inspection labels exist, despite laws mandating them
When we visited three local peanut producers, having gotten their contact information from
jars of peanut butter in supermarkets, we arrived at impoverished households with zero
phytosanitary controls. It never occurred to any of them that they could be inspected by a
government official
Imported eggs and breads available in the top Port-au-Prince Supermarkets have no
expiration dates
One distributor/informant interviewed during the course of the research proudly
proclaimed that, “Haiti has more laws governing distribution than the US ….” It is difficult
to verify whether this is true, since they are neither applied nor published. But the most
important point that the businessman was making is that those laws that are applied are
there to protect big business—such as his own. There are no active consumer laws. In short,
it is a paradise for unethical and locally connected business owners, but a prospective
nightmare for consumers who may fall sick from products.
Elite, Imports, Corruption, Political Instability and the Stacked Deck
In the absence of government regulations seen above, any endeavors to import must consider the
competitive advantage of those already importing and in control of the customs houses and ports.
Figure 32 on the following page uses edible oil imports to illustrate the problems with corruption
and favoritism, and elite control of customs houses. Haiti produces no edible oil and, as seen
earlier, the population is on the margin of survival regarding edible oil consumption. Biologically,
the Haitian population cannot survive with significantly less oil than is imported in the maximum
years seen in Section 5. Yet, with the lone exception of the year 2002—more than 2 times higher
than the two years around it—we see that the official tally of oil imports fell far below this
threshold. This is most likely a reflection of the impact of tax evasion by oil importers that
fluctuates with the major political events of the time. For example, changes in recorded imports
surrounding the fall of the Aristide government in 2004 have been attributed by some observers to