other gentlemen have been talking about, and I believe the public can be better protected from fraud through the imposition of penalties than by the imposition of a tax. I am glad, however, that you were frank enough to state that the purpose of the tax was to curtail the production of margarine, and that is the way I feel about it. Mr. SKIVER. Well, I do not know that that is the purpose of it, Senator. That is the way it has acted in our case, that at least it was not true until the order was issued. Senator ELLENDER. Have you anything further you desire to state? Mr. SKIVER. No; I do not believe I have, Senator. Senator ELLENDER. If not, the committee will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. (Thereupon, at 3:45 p. m., a recess was had until 10 a. m., June 9, 1944.) TO REGULATE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF MARGARINE FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1944 UNITED STATES SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., in the committee room of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 324 Senate Office Building, Senator Allen J. Ellender presiding. There were present before the subcommittee: Dr. E. B. Hart, professor of biochemistry, University of Wisconsin; A. G. Hopkins, representing National Association of Margarine Manufacturers; Dr. Hugo J. Sommer, professor of dairy industry, University of Wisconsin; C. H. Staples, professor and head, department of dairying, college of agriculture, Louisiana State University; Mrs. Margaret K. Taylor, 1731 Eye Street NW., Washington, D. C., director, educational department of the National Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation; Charles W. Holman, National Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation; Mrs. Sam A. Rask, Steele County, Minn., State agricultural chairman, Minnesota Federation of Women's Clubs, and Mrs. Edna Brinkman, consumer's committee, Illinois Dairy Products Association. Senator ELLENDER. The meeting will be in order. Is Dr. E. B. Hart present? Dr. HART. Yes, sir. Senator ELLENDER. Will you step forward, please? Dr. Hart, will you give your name in full for the record, and your present occupation, and such other descriptive matter as you may desire to place in the record about yourself and your work? STATEMENT OF DR. E. B. HART, PROFESSOR OF BIOCHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN Dr. HART, My name is E. B. Hart. I am professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin. I am here authorized by the dean of the college of agriculture. I am sure you do not care for me to go into details of my qualifications, except to say that I have been at the university for 38 years, and my principal work has been in biochemistry and in nutrition. Senator ELLENDER. As a teacher? Dr. HART. As a teacher and in research, so that the problems that are here before us have been under investigation at that institution for some time. Senator ELLENDER. Doctor, before you proceed, I wish to state that Senator Aiken made a request yesterday that we put before you certain 163 samples of oleo butter and butter made from soybeans, and so forth, so that you could look at them and discuss them if you desire to, or you may even go so far, if you desire, as to ask questions of Mr. Hopkins, who presented them here. That is a little unusual, but as I have stated to many of those in attendance at these hearings, what we want here are the facts, and if we do not follow the strict rules and regulations of the committee, that is our business. Mr. Hopkins is very anxious to go to New York, he would like to get away before 12 o'clock. We stopped him yesterday from going, and he is very anxious to leave, so, if it will not interfere with your present program, I would appreciate it if you would be kind enough to go into that matter at present, so that we can give him a leave of absence. Dr. HART. Well, Senator, may I present what I have to say first? Senator ELLENDER. That is agreeable. Dr. HART. I will not be very long. It has been stated here by certain witnesses that the nutritive value of good margarine is identical with good butter, except for flavor. That particular point I want to discuss somewhat, especially in reference to the vegetable oils. The history of research in reference to the nutritive value of vegetable oils goes back a good many years, and goes back to our own laboratory, when it was first shown that the vegetable oils contain very little vitamin A. That was done in my own laboratory by Dr. McCollum. About 25 years ago an attempt was made to put upon the market a product known as Hebe, a filled milk which was made by taking the fat out of milk and then homogenizing in it a vegetable oil. At that time, in Wisconsin we opposed by legislation the manufacture of that product, on the basis of the vegetable oils not containing vitamin A. Statutes in reference to filled milk have been extended to other States. The objection 25 years ago was that the nutritive value of Hebe was not equivalent to that of a whole evaporated milk. As time went on and research accumulated, it became possible for men to find vitamin A and put it in vegetable oils. The Caroline Co., of Fitchfield, Ill., a few years ago began the manufacture of a filled milk in which they put vitamin A in the vegetable oil. Senator ELLENDER. What kind of milk was that? Dr. HART. Filled milk. Senator ELLENDER. What is that? Dr. HART. That is milk from which you have taken the butterfat and in which you have substituted- Senator ELLENDER. You would not call that skim milk? Dr. HART. Not skim milk, but it is substituted in vegetable oil, and then they put the vitamin A in vegetable oil and claimed the product as equivalent to evaporated milk. In the meantime they would get out an injunction against the enforcement of the filled milk law in the various States and put this material on the market. So there has been legislation pending concerning the legality of such procedure. I I have been a teacher of biochemistry for a great many years. have always been interested in milk and its constitution, and I have always suspected that the mammary gland made something very special when it constituted milk. You have in milk a special sugar known as lactose; you have special fine products. As the studies have gone on it has been determined that practically all the nutrients that are necessary for continued life and reproduction by a laboratory animal are contained in milk. All you have to do to make milk a complete food is to add iron, copper, and manganese, and vitamin D for the child, and you have a complete food. It carries them through one cycle after the other, these laboratory animals. And as a matter of fact, boys in our short course oftentimes in the winter have been sustained on this milk for months, reinforced in this way. Well, the point I wanted to make is this: That I suspected that there was something more in butterfat than mere calories, as compared, for instance, with coconut oil or soybean oil, and so on, and so we began a series of experiments to determine whether, after we had reinforced a skim milk from which the fat had been taken out reinforced with vitamin A or vitamin D, as to whether that milk so reinforced was equivalent in nutritive value to butterfat or a butterfat milk. Those results were rather interesting, and demonstrated to us that there was some growth-promoting influence superior in butterfat to the vegetable oils when we used a skim-milk diet. Senator ELLENDER. What do you use for a subject in your experiments? Dr. HART. This is the rat. Senator ELLENDER. Somebody objected to the use of the rat yesterday as a subject to experiment with. So in your process you are using the rat? Dr. HART. We use the rat in our experimental work entirely, as the laboratory animal, because, after all, as I want to point out, it is impossible to have experiments with humans. Senator ELLENDER. I understand that, Doctor. Dr. HART. No one has done that yet. No one has taken a thousand children and subjected them to the influences of these particular kinds of things. Senator ELLENDER. You are of the opinion that the use of the rat as a subject to demonstrate the qualities of foods is reliable? Dr. HART. Very useful, but not necessarily translatable to the human. Let me give you an illustration. These laboratories have been using rats as an experimental animal for a great many years. You have in the South the disease called pellagra, dermatitis of the skin, insanity following, and so on. Had the rat been used to experiment with to disclose whether that was a nutritional disease or not, they would have completely failed, and not until the dog was used that is sensitive to this particular disease, was there a possibility of putting the cause of pellagra upon a nutritional basis. Senator ELLENDER. Suppose it be a rat, a dog, a coon, or a mink, it is possible to find out the effect of certain drugs or foods that may be transmittable to the human? The reason I am asking you is because it was questioned in the testimony by some witness-I do not recall who it was now-but since you have opened the subject, I should like to have in the record your views on that, and I presume that you will tell us about the experiments you carried on with the rats, and how that was translatable to the human. Dr. HART. Well, Senator, they have not been translated, because they have not been tried with the human. And as I say, one cannot absolutely conclude. There are a good many phases of nutrition that |