milk for 16 cents a can. In the city, in some areas, you pay 26 cents a can. You will be told to buy Enfamil with iron in it. In the city stores you have it already mixed with water and will pay 69 cents for itthat is 1 day's supply-rather than the grocer stocking it at a lower price so the mother can take it home and mix it with water. Now, they do not do this.

I would be glad to answer any questions that I might.

Senator MCGOVERN. Thank you very much, Mrs. Josaitis.

Now Miss Jones, can we hear from you?

STATEMENT OF DORINDA JONES, MAYOR'S COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RESOURCES, DETROIT

Miss JONES. Thank you Senator McGovern.

Needless to say, we certainly share the concern that has been expressed by Father Cunningham and Mrs. Josaitis for the people in Detroit who are experiencing the problems of hunger and malnutrition.

What I have been asked to do is to share with you the process by which this program has worked over the last year. As Father Cunningham has said, it has been estimated that there are approximately 33,000 persons in Detroit, including pregnant women, mothers of infants, and preschool children who are in need of a high protein diet but are unable to afford the cost necessary to maintain one.

At this time, the Mayor's Committee for Human Resources Development, the Salvation Army, FOCUS: HOPE, volunteers from the United Presbyterian Women, the League of Catholic Women, the Detroit maternity and infant care project and others are combining Federal and private resources along with staff services and volunteer workers to provide highly nutritious foods to 3,500 of the 53,000 needy persons within the city of Detroit.

This program was set up under the auspices of two Federal departments.

The Department of Agriculture provides the high quality foods and the Office of Economic Opportunity provides the funds for administration, handling, and distribution.

We feel that the system set up in Detroit has been efficient and are confident that it can be expanded without loss of efficiency or effectiveness. We have learned a lot from the process of operating this program over the past year that we really did not know or that we were not sufficiently aware of at the early planning stages of the project.

PROBLEMS ARE TWOFOLD

The problems as we see it are twofold: getting the food to the qualified people and getting people to the food. I will discuss the procedures separately.

All agencies serving the poor have been informed of the supplemental food program and there has been publicity in the daily newspaper as well as neighborhood publications.

Word of the program has been disseminated through the advisory committees of MCHRD, public health nurses, welfare social workers, the Visiting Nurse Association, and other community groups.

In order to be eligible for the program as structured in Detroit, one must be pregnant or have delivered within 1 year, be declared by a doctor as needing a diet supplemented by high protein food, and be medically indigent. Preschool aged children are also eligible if they meet conditions two and three.

Eligibility for the program is determined by medical personnel in the participating clinics, who write food prescriptions for the individuals and refer them to the program. Arrangements are then made for food pickups, utilizing volunteers to provide transportation if necessary.

Food is picked up as prescribed at any of several pickup points. The food itself arrives by boxcar from the Department of Agricul ture in bulk form. It is then taken to the warehouse and inventoried. Volunteers then repackage the food into family-sized packages and it is taken to the distribution points for distribution to persons in the program.

As I said before, the system is efficient and effective and could be expanded with little trouble.

HISTORY OF DETROIT PROGRAM

Let me discuss now a brief history of the program in Detroit. In 1969, the Salvation Army volunteered to provide the resources necessary to distribute USDA food to patients in the Detroit maternity and infant care project who were in need of a nutritionally sound diet but did not have sufficient income to buy the high protein foods included within that diet.

The Salvation Army operated the program for 1 year and served 500 persons.

In 1970, it became obvious that the Salvation Army could no longer carry the burden of the program by itself and MCHRD was requested to provide funding. I might add that this request came to the mayor's committee after several other possible sources had been explored and found to be unfruitful.

The regional office of the OEO granted MCHRD $56,285 to operate a 14-month program serving 3,500 persons. The grant year became effective on July 1, 1970, and continues through August 31 of this year. We have recently received approval of a $101,000 grant from OEO which will expand the program to serve 10,000-18,000 through August 1972, depending upon USDA willingness to increase the amount of food available to needy persons in Detroit.

FOCUS: HOPE, a nonprofit organization entered the program in December 1970, providing volunteer services and later serving as the coordinating agency for other volunteers.

We feel that there is no question that we have the necessary machinery and expertise to handle an expanded program. MCHRD is geared to handle programs directed to the poor and has been doing that for a period of more than 6 years.

Our experience with the supplemental food program as well as other programs has convinced us that an expanded program can be handled adequately by the agencies now involved.

WIDE, COMMUNITY-BASED SUPPORT

I think it is important that the fact be brought out of the wide, community-based support of this program in Detroit. We have the support of public, private, business, and social organizations, many of whom are not directly affected by the program but realize how vital a program it is.

Our support comes not only from inner city groups but from suburban groups as well. This support has come through the magnificent effort of FOCUS: HOPE.

We, in Detroit, are able, and eager to get on with the task of providing much-needed high-protein food to additional needy persons highly vulnerable to the evils of malnutrition.

We recognize the task as an important one. We hope that others will consider it equally as important and provide the impetus that will bring additional help to those in Detroit who need us.

Thank you.

Senator MCGOVERN. Thank you very much, Miss Jones. I want to say to all three of the witnesses that in my opinion it is the kind of humane and compassionate concern that you people and others like you have demonstrated over the past few years that has kept this hunger issue alive and enabled us to make the progress we have made. Goodness knows, we have a long ways to go before anyone is going to be satisfied that we won the battle against hunger, but the gains that have been made, in my opinion, to a great extent can be attributed to people like yourselves who kept up this fight and have seen it firsthand where people live.

It is most helpful to the committee to get reports of this kind that are presented with such personal insight and force. We want to thank you for your testimony.

There are just a couple of questions I wanted to direct before we call Senator Magnuson, who is here to testify on another aspect of this program. Of the estimated 53,000 people that you referred to, Father Cunningham, have any of these actually been declared eligible for the program? That is, have been declared as eligible recipients? I am not quite clear how that 53,000 figure was arrived at.

Reverend CUNNINGHAM. First of all, the 53,000 figure was arrived. at through the Headstart program originally; the numbers of children. who were part of that program in its early stages in Detroit.

That 53,000, therefore, is, as I stated, Senator, a very conservative estimate. At the present time there are waiting lists at all our maternity and infant care centers of people who have been certified or people who wish to be certified but who cannot receive food.

There are health centers in the city of Detroit, clinics and hospitalsone of our major hospitals in the city, the Detroit General that cannot certify.

There are innercity doctors who would like to certify.

There are doctors in what might be called the poor communities suburban to Detroit who would like to certify people who they know to be very poor and malnutritioned and could well be certified for the

Senator MCGOVERN. You are actually turning away people who you know are eligible?

CANNOT INCLUDE THERE IS NO FOOD

Reverend CUNNINGHAM. We are putting people on waiting lists, but we are turning away.

There are, as I say, some very angry people in hospitals and clinics in Detroit, who feel they should be part of the program. We cannot include them because we do not have the food.

Senator MCGOVERN. The argument is often presented, as you know, that the food stamp program is supposed to cover people that we cannot reach with this program. I take it from what all of you said here this morning that that simply doesn't work out in practice in reaching the very poor particularly.

Reverend CUNNINGHAM. Senator, I am perpetually amazed by people who talk of the food stamp program in terms of their inexperience. I included a longer study for you-it is not in this report-which surveys the stores in the city of Detroit following the riot of 1967. That study has been made more current; and with each restudy of that survey of stores in the city of Detroit, the picture becomes more bleak. We are working on that and hope to do something about it. The head of the Economics Department of the University of Detroit, who is a member of the statisticians' union, which I addressed a year ago, heard me talk on the stamp program, and I mentioned this fact that I mention to so many others: Stamps in the city of Detroit lose any kind of effect of subsidizing the poor man's dollar because he has to pay so much more for his groceries in that city, because the landlocked poor can go nowhere else but to the smaller independent stores where they, for whatever reasons one might hear-most of them myths-have to pay 40 percent more for their groceries.

Senator MCGOVERN. Which has the effect of canceling out the bonus. Reverend CUNNINGHAM. Completely.

I want to say, this person-she won the support of the statisticianssaid: "So what? They did not pay for the stamps what the groceries are worth anyway, so why shouldn't they have to pay more for the groceries?" It is this kind of logic that leaves one wondering about the Mad-Hatter society that we are living in. I am waiting for rabbits to start talking with this kind of logic. This is what we get from USDA.

Senator MCGOVERN. You made reference to the need for more money for storage and distribution. Supposing the Department actually came up with more food. That is, if food input at least were substantially increased. Could Detroit find the money for storage and distribution? Reverend CUNNINGHAM, Detroit currently has and will have for the next year-sufficient funds to handle up to 16,000 units. Let me say I can promise that FOCUS: HOPE will handle it with local funds, with anything we can get our hands on, including the very rich resources of volunteers, who have, at this point, put 60,000 hours into this program.

Senator MCGOVERN. So the most urgent thing is to get the food.

USDA MUST COMMIT FOOD FOR ALL

Reverend CUNNINGHAM. We can handle any amount of food that the Department of Agriculture can give us. But what we are demanding as a right in justice, as an inalienable right of the poor, is that we have this food committed from Agriculture today to feed all the 53,000. Senator MCGOVERN. There is no question in my mind that it was the intent of the Congress in this legislation that Senator Hart and I introduced, which was passed by Congress, to provide an additional $20 million, and that it was intended that that fund be used to provide supplemental food needs in areas precisely like the Detroit situation. I am going to be very anxious to see what Department officials have to say about how they are interpreting the act.

We do want to thank you. I wish we had time for more questions, but your entire report will be read and studied by the committee. I am very hopeful that through this hearing today we can break loose additional support.

Mrs. JOSATTIS. When we talk about food stamps in Detroit, there are very few places that people on stamps can go to purchase their stamps. Second, if they pay the high prices for the stamps and they want to get the most for their dollar, they will get a jitney service and pay $3 to $5 to take them into suburban areas to get better buys. The problem there is that the stores would not honor the food stamps, so the woman goes all through the checkout line and then has

Senator MCGOVERN. Why don't they honor the food stamps? You know they can be honored at any store that is certified for the program by the Department of Agriculture.

Mrs. JOSAITIS. They are not honored in the suburban stores. That is something we are working on right now. As a matter of fact, larger supermarkets where you can get the best bargains, will pay no attention to them.

Senator MCGOVERN. Thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony.

Senator Magnuson, we would be pleased to hear from you. Proceed in any way you wish.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARREN G. MAGNUSON, U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I might say, Mr. Chairman, if I am permitted, before these people leave, that I did not hear all of their testimony, but I heard enough of it to realize that the food stamp problem, which is what I am going to talk about, is the same in Seattle as where you talked about.

I am going to try and stress to the distinguished chairman from South Dakota that the Agriculture Department just insists adamantly and callously that the food stamp program is "it." This takes care of everybody.

And it just does not.

The same problem exists in our town, where we have the largest unemployment now in the United States. But you have enough there, too, so I am glad to be able to follow you.

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