the protection of consumers. At its triennial national convention in 1955 the YWCA voted to continue to support "the protection of consumers through such measures as food and drug regulation and inspection and measures to maintain quality standards." We have been shocked to learn of conditions that prevail in some parts of the poultry industry. We have read with alarm that the Public Health Service reports that an average of one-third of the reported cases of food poisoning are traced to poultry or poultry dishes; that some 26 diseases have been found transmissible from poultry to man; and that fatalities have actually occurred due to diseased poultry. Considering the phenomenal growth of the poultry industry in the past 20 years, selling as it did in 1954 1,050 million broilers alone; considering also that the poultry and egg industry is now the third largest source of agricultural income, the national board of the YWCA urges your committee to recommend legislation to provide adequate inspection for wholesomeness and sanitation in the poultry industry. The poultry industry stands alone among the major producers of food in not being properly regulated. The voluntary program of inspection has obviously failed and, though unsafe and unfit poultry is processed by a minority of the industry, we do not feel that they should be allowed to sell diseased or unwholesome products. We specifically support S. 3176 to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, so as to prohibit the movement in interstate or foreign commerce of unsound, unhealthful, diseased, unwholesome, or adulterated poultry or poultry products. Sincerely yours, LILACE REID BARNES, President, National Board. STATE OF NEBRASKA, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, Lincoln, April 11, 1956. Chairman, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: You are to be commended for the speech that was made in the Senate of the United States Friday, February 10, 1956, urging the need of compulsory inspection of poultry and poultry products as described in the Senate bill 3176. We take this means of endorsing your bill and urging that you do all in your power to see that this bill is activated into law. In the promotion of public health, we are finding that agencies other than those responsible for human health do not grasp the full significance of the effect that various programs and activities have on human health. Far too often the industrial and economic aspects are taken into consideration at the expense of the human beings that are depending upon someone else's services in safeguarding them. This is especially true in some of the food areas where dirty and filthy products are processed for human consumption under the assumption that processing will destroy the harmful organisms. Even though this might be true, we still believe that the human being is entitled to a better product than is now supplied to them in many areas. It is well known that many of the diseases of animals and fowls are transmissible to man. This makes the program of even greater public-health significance. Therefore, persons who are inspecting, grading, and certifying poultry and poultry products should have the background of public health as it applies to the protection of the human being. The bill you proposed indicates that this will be done. We, therefore, endorse the bill and hope that it may be passed. Yours very truly, E. A. ROGERS, M. D., M. P. H., Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, NASSAU COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, Chairman, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Senate Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: The bill S. 3176 to amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, so as to prohibit the movement in interstate or foreign commerce of unsound, unhealthy, diseased, unwholesome, or adulterated poultry or poultry products, has my support. Please make every effort for the passage of this bill to assure the consumer that his or her purchase of poultry or poultry products is free of disease and is wholesome. Very truly yours, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, H. P. ARONSON, D. V. M., STATE OF NEW JERSEY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, Chairman, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: Your remarks in the Congressional Record introducing Senate bill No. 3176 which would require the compulsory inspection of all poultry moving interstate, indicate a definite need for such legislation. This department is in accord with this legislation as proposed and wishes to be recorded as urging its passage. Respectfully, DANIEL BERGSMA, M. D., M. P. H., State Commissioner of Health. Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, THE DIVISION OF HEALTH OF MISSOURI, Chairman, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: I have had the opportunity of reading your speech to the Senate of the United States on Friday, February 10, 1956, and support of Senate bill 3176 to amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to prohibit the movement in interstate or foreign commerce of unsound, unhealthful, diseased, unwholesome, or adulterated poultry or poultry products. I believe that this is a very worthwhile public health measure and most certainly should be enacted as soon as possible. The poultry processing industry of Missouri is probably the most deplorable of our food-handling industries. In a good many cases even the poultry plants who are under the inspection of the United States Department of Agriculture have neglected entirely, or to a large extent, the sanitary facilities in these plants including the cleanliness of floors, walls, ceilings, equipment, tables, benches, shelves and similar equipment which comes in contact with the finished or semifinished poultry. In most instances the USDA is primarily concerned with the elimination of sick or diseased poultry, either prior or after processing. This does not, however, eliminate the insanitary practices carried on within these plants nor does it prevent the contamination of otherwise wholesome poultry by sloppy and improper handling of carcasses and improper cleaning equipment. This is probably due to the difference in concept between the Agricultural Department and the Public Health Agency. Agriculture is interested primarily in assisting in a financial way the poultry raiser and the poultry processor. Public Health Officials are interested in protecting the health of all the people whether they be the raisers of poultry, the processors of poultry, the employees in poultry plants or the consumer of such poultry. We, therefore, believe that it is necessary to have not only ante mortem and post mortem inspection of poultry products but to also maintain proper sanitary procedures throughout the entire operation from the time the bird is received at the poultry plant until it is consumed by the consumer. The enactment of this bill will do much to encourage and strengthen our appeal to the State legislature for similar laws on a statewide basis. I am Secretary and Treasurer of the Missouri Milk and Food Sanitarians Association affiliated with the International Association of Milk and Food Sanitarians with a State membership of approximately 300 sanitarians, food processors and other interested persons connected with the food industry and I have discussed this bill with the present and executive board and they are wholeheartedly in support of this proposed bill. Our annual meeting will not be held until April 16, therefore, we will not be able to get a resolution into your hands until after that meeting, however, I am sure that this association will be in favor of this bill and I will attempt to send the resolution to you as soon as it is available. By direction of James R. Amos, M. D., director, division of health. JOHN H. MCCUTCHEN, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, CITY OF SYRACUSE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, United States Senate Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: I have read the speech and the poultry inspection bill which you have before the Senate. On the basis of my experience in public health work and my firsthand knowledge of the practices followed by some segments of the poultry industry, I am deeply gratified that you and your confreres have taken the trouble to inform yourselves in this matter and to take this action. I wish to commend you and to endorse the bill, and I sincerely hope that favorable action will be taken promptly. Such action is long overdue. I wish to take this opportunity to tell you further that I and all others who are engaged in public health activity are deeply concerned with the failure of Congress to provide adequate funds for the Food and Drug Administration. It is well known that this division is sadly understaffed and limited in funds and that the public health and welfare suffers thereby. If more of the recommendations made by the Hoover Committee were followed, some of the funds that are now apparently wasted could be turned over to FFDA, to the great benefit of the consuming public. Sincerely yours, C. H. DU MOND, Director, Bureau Food Sanitation. EAST BAY VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, Oakland, Calif. Senator JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Labor and Public Welfare Committee, DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: At the last regular meeting of our association, which represents a very great majority of the practicing veterinarians of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, a resolution was unanimously passed to communicate with you and allow you to know that we feel that Senate bill 3176 concerning the interstate or foreign movement of poultry or poultry products is not only needed but also necessary for the public welfare. Inspection of anything to be used by the public is good, but if it is to be of any true value, this inspection should be responsible to the consumer not the producer. As an individual, at times, I am amazed by the poor quality of poultry that comes out of packages that bear an official looking seal of inspection. As individuals, and as a professional group we urgently request that your committee favorably consider this legislation. Sincerely yours, LEO S. GOLDSTON, D. V. M., Secretary. COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, DEAR SIR: My attention has been called to Senate bill No. 3176 introduced by you, and I would like to give my personal endorsement of this bill having had some 20 years of contact with the meat and poultry industry, and in having full knowledge of dangers involved of which the general public is unaware. I am in full accord with public welfare. All poultry and poultry products should have compulsory inspection. Very truly, L. E. BECKHAM, D. V. M., CONFERENCE OF STATE SANITARY ENGINEERS, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: I have been authorized by the executive board of the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers to write to you with reference to S. 3176, "to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act so as to prohibit the movement in interstate or foreign commerce of unsound, unhealthful, diseased, unwholesome, or adulterated poultry or poultry products." We are strongly in favor of its passage because it provides for compulsory inspection of all poultry, which moves interstate under a consumer protective organization. We will appreciate whatever you can do to help promote public health in this area of food inspection. Sincerely yours, ALFRED H. FLETCHER, Secretary-Treasurer. HOUSEWIVES UNITED, Washington, D. C., May 30, 1956. DEAR SENATOR: We feel very strongly that S. 3176, the poultry inspection bill, should be passed. Poultry raising is no longer a small, home industry, as it used to be; it is now a big business enterprise-with the attendant risks that come from carelessness or greed when things are done on a large scale. While we are confident that the great majority of people in the poultry industry are honest and careful, it is the very few who are not honest and careful who constitute a hazard to our health-and who give a bad name to the industry as a whole. Certainly the passage of this bill should help the poultry industry. We have heard too much for too long about filthy and diseased fowls to have the confidence that we should have when buying food in a country as enlightened as the United States. In fact, board members of Housewives United have decided that very soon it will be in order for housewives to refuse to buy poultry that does not show it has been Government inspected. If the Food and Drug Administration is going to be too involved with its expansion program during the next 5 to 10 years (and we can understand that this may well be the case), we agree then that poultry inspection might be added to the Meat Inspection Act of the Department of Agriculture. But we would strongly advise that poultry inspection be carried out just as the red meat inspection has been carried out. We do not feel that this could be accomplished if poultry inspection were to be made a part of the Agricultural Marketing Division. Selling and buying, though definitely related, required two different viewpoints, of course. And we ourselves do not think that voluntary inspection has worked too well. It is not the man who asks for inspection and who pays for that inspection,. himself, who endangers the people's health. It is the man who thinks he can. get away with selling just any old bird, dead or dying, and the man who keeps his plant in an unsanitary condition who needs the inspection, and who, if he is not forced to have it, may constitute a serious threat to the health of American families. Just how serious this threat to our health is we may not yet know. Besides the time we were sure it was the chicken that made us sick, some sudden, unexplained illness could well be caused by the consumption of bad fowls, particularly in public eating places. We feel that poultry inspection-before and after slaughter-should be automatic for birds that are sold in large quantities in interstate commerce, and that such inspection should be paid for by the taxpayers as part of our health insurance, just as the inspection of red meat has been for 50 years. We would advise an amendment to S. 3176 that would exempt small farmers who sell their own poultry to housewives nearby, and an amendment that would permit imports of quality poultry from other countries. The Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Walfare has suggested that January 1, 1956, is an unrealistic date to put into the bill, since much preparation will be needed before it can be enforced. This may be true. But we would hope for the earlist possible date for mandatory inspection. When people are being made ill by fowl that is processed in dirty plants, and by fowl that smell bad and have sores on them-tomorrow does not seem too soon. Yours very sincerely, FRANCES WRIGHT, (Mrs. Louis B. Wright), President. MARGARIE P. WHITE, (Mrs. Mastin G. White), Vice President. FLORENCE S. KERR, OREGON FEDERATION OF BUTCHERS OF THE AMALGAMATED Portland, Oreg. RESOLUTION Whereas Oregon has just experienced an outbreak of psittacosis and many members of Egg and Poultry Workers Local Union No. 231 have been stricken with said disease and some are still hospitalized; and Whereas there has been at least 2 deaths due to psittacosis in this area, and Whereas there are 26 diseases that are transmissible from poultry to man; and Whereas one-third of food poisoning has been traced by the Public Health Service to poultry or poultry dishes; and Whereas the processing of poultry and poultry products in uninspected plants are being processed under conditions that are far from sanitary, and in many cases are unfit for human consumption: Therefore be it Resolved, That the Oregon Federation of Butchers, AFL-CIO, in convention assembled this 14th day of May 1956, in the city of Salem, Oreg., go on record as being in favor of and supporting S. 3176 and H. R. 8599 in an effort to clean up this very undesirable and dangerous practice of slaughtering, processing, and selling poultry and poultry products that are unfit for human consumption; and be it further Resolved, That copies of this resolution be sent to our delegation in Congress, the chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFLCIO, urging their support and passage of S. 3176 and H. R. 8599. Respectfully submitted. H. E. BARKER, Secretary. |