In an attempt to improve public health in a country with soaring obesity rates, Samoa banned imports of turkey tails in 2007.

But starting this week, the tails — fatty lumps that are illegal in the U.S. and many other countries where they’ve been deemed a public health threat — are being allowed back onto the Pacific island nation.

Samoa wants to get into the World Trade Organization and struck a deal to drop the ban but put extremely high tariffs on them instead. The tails became a staple of the Samoan diet because they were cheap.

NPR has a great story on the issue, excerpts:

Samoa’s ban on the import of turkey tails — and New Zealand mutton flaps, as well — in 2007 was the government’s attempt to improve public health in a country that, like several other Pacific island nations, has among the highest rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension in the world. According to a 2010 report from Samoa’s Ministry of Health, 53 percent of Samoans are obese.

Sela Panapasa is an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research of Fijian and Tongan ancestry. She studies the worsening health problems of Pacific islanders and says turkey tails were a big part of the local diet because they were cheap and accessible until the ban came along.

“I know it may seem ironic but fish and native staple foods do cost more than turkey tails,” she says.

Mutton flaps, in case you were curious, are the fattest part of a sheep said to contain “more fat per fram than a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese.” The ban on that product is also being lifted.

Read the full story.

– Sara Lin

Photo via Ltshears on Wikimedia Commons.