Mr. REIDY. You realize that the jurisdiction of this committee extends to all matters of public health?

Mr. TRIGGS. I am not questioning the jurisdiction of the committee at all. I am sorry if my statement left any implication to that point." Mr. REIDY. I just wanted it clear in the record. The fact that Senator Murray's bill is creating an added responsibility for the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare which is subject to the jurisdiction of the committee is why it was referred here. I believe that any legislation adding another burden or responsibility to the Department of Agriculture would automatically have to be considered by that committee as well as this.

We had received a copy of a summary of a meeting of the New Jersey State Farm Bureau poultry committee held in Trenton, N. J., May 4, which contained the resolution of the American Farm Bureau convention which you have read that "Mandatory inspection of red meat and livestock slaughtering establishments as presently financed and administered by the USDA has helped to insure the wholesomeness of meat sold in their State commerce. We urge the extension of this service to include poultry meat."

Do I understand correctly that the Farm Bureau Federation in this resolution is urging an expansion of the red meat inspection service to include poultry?

Mr. TRIGGS. Not necessarily the red meat inspection service. We do not intend by our resolution or our language that we have presented in our statement to try to recommend the manner and the organization in which the program should be carried out in the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. REIDY. Would you mind telling me at this point what is involved in the passing of a resolution by the American Farm Bureau convention? Who voted on this? Who voted it, the board or what body?

Mr. TRIGGS. Our resolutions committee consists of the presidents of the 48 State Farm Bureaus plus 6, I think, women from the Women's Department, and the representative of the Young People's Department. It does not include any of the executive officers of the American Farm Bureau itself, that is, the overall organization.

This resolutions committee, which meets for a period altogether of about 10 days, breaks up into subcommittees. The subcommittees report resolutions which are considered, debated, amended, and adopted by the overall resolutions committee. Following this process the resolutions are referred to the house of delegates. The house of delegates is a much larger body in which representation, instead of being on a 1-man, 1-State basis, recognizes that there is a substantial variation in the membership of the respective State farm bureaus and has larger numbers of representatives of the large State farm bureaus. Again the resolutions are debated. Amendments are frequently offered. Occasionally a resolution is disapproved. Finally, the resolution is adopted by the voting by the voting delegates.

Mr. REIDY. This resolution was adopted by the voting delegates I presume by a majority vote?

Mr. TRIGGS. As I recollect, there was a great deal of discussion of this in the resolutions committee, but little, if any, in the house of delegates.

Mr. REIDY. When the delegates voted for this and approved this resolution would we not have to assume that they understood the words to mean what they say? We are voting for a resolution which says, "We urge the extension of this service to include poultry meat." And the only service mentioned is the mandatory inspection of red

meat.

Mr. TRIGGS. I know by having heard the discussion that their primary objective in making reference to the red meat inspection program is that they think this is a pretty good program, the method of financing and the manner in which it is carried on. Their desire was to see to it that the poultry inspection program was set up on approximately a comparable basis. The resolution does not intend to make a recommendation-

Mr. REIDY. The resolution, I assume, must speak for itself. You told us how very carefully these are drafted, There is a subcommittee of the full committee on resolutions. I assume you gentlemen are very well experienced with government. If you had wanted to you would have said, "We urge the creation of a comparable system," rather than the extension of this service, if that had been intended. But I don't want to belabor that point.

Mr. TRIGGS. There wasn't any consideration of this issue. Am I correct?

Mr. ALP. That is correct.

Mr. REIDY. I would say the burden of your testimony in testifying to place this inspection service in the Agriculture Department rests upon the excellent job being done by the red meat inspection service and, secondly, you have made what I think is an important point when you said that by putting it in Agriculture we would avoid a duplication of personnel. That would be true, I assume, only if it were put in the red meat inspection division, where the same individual could inspect poultry and meat. Or am I wrong? Is there any other way of avoiding duplication of personnel?

Mr. TRIGGS. There is certainly the possibility of avoiding quite so much duplication of organization, and much more possibility of obtaining coordination and integration between even two agencies in the same department with a common supervisor than there is in obtaining cooperation between agencies of different departments.

I have worked with the Government long enough to know how difficult it is to work that out.

Mr. REIDY. I was speaking only to the point of duplication of personnel. If we are going to set up a mandatory inspection service under the Agricultural Marketing Service, they would presumably have to have just as many people as we would have to have if it were put in the Food and Drug Administration. I can see, however, that we could save in personnel, or at least I would assume so, if it were handled by the going red meat inspection division. It would have to take on additional personnel but I assume not as many.

Mr. TRIGGS. I don't know what the possibilities are of coordinating administration and personnel. I think this is a difficult subject in itself and one that we are simply not prepared to testify on.

Mr. REIDY. I have only one more question. Did I understand correctly that you said that you would want the Secretary to be granted the power to exempt a particular plant only on the basis of the Secretary's being unable to provide service for a period of time?

That was in your prepared statement, of which I don't have a copy. Mr. TRIGGS. It is not an uncommon thing, as you will appreciate, for the Congress to enact enabling legislation and then simply neglect "neglect" is not the right word-but in any event, money is not provided for carrying on the service. I remember a few years ago the Congress enacted a water pollution program providing, among other things, for grants to municipalities for undertaking the construction of municipal sewage plants. However, the Congress simply never appropriated any money to carry on this program. Even more common is the situation where you just don't provide enough money to undertake a program. This is not critical at all. I am for the Congress balancing the budget and cutting expenditures. But there is a tremendous call on public funds and a tremendous conflict between a great many interests to get enough money to adequately carry on the particular governmental functions they are interested in. So it happens commonly. I think there has to be some escape valve in the legislation so that there is not just a positive prohibition under any and all circumstances against the movement in commerce of uninspected poultry when circumstances can readily be envisaged where it would not be practical or possible. It might be the illness or accident of an individual in an isolated area.

Mr. REIDY. I think your point is very well taken. I wanted to bring out again the fact that you said this exemption should be, as far as you were concerned, only under those circumstances.

Mr. TRIGGS. Yes. I think it should be temporary.

Mr. REIDY. Not where a processor had refused to bring his plant up. Mr. TRIGGS. I wasn't thinking of that.

Mr. REIDY. Thank you, Mr. Triggs.

Would your associate like to comment on anything that may have been said? We would be glad to have it in the record if so.

Mr. ALP. I might add, Mr. Chairman, in the light of some of the testimony which has been given today it is interesting to read in yesterday's Wall Street Journal a statement which starts out by saying:

Americans heaped their platters with 825 million pounds of chicken and turkey meat during the first quarter, which is up 18 percent.

My point in mentioning this is simply that, while we have some situations that we don't condone, the industry as a whole, this whole picture is on a very high plane. I think the industry itself, plus our organization, would be the first to agree that mandatory inspection is a "must."

Mr. REIDY. May I ask you, sir, a question we asked this morning. Apparently the Farm Bureau Federation is in favor of mandatory inspection of poultry. We can take it for granted that you see nothing in such inspection which is going to hurt poultry producers. Mr. TRIGGS. No, sir.

Mr. REIDY. Thank

you, sir.

Our next witness will be Mr. John Baker, representing the Farmers'

STATEMENT OF JOHN A. BAKER, COORDINATOR OF LEGISLATIVE SERVICE, NATIONAL FARMERS' UNION

Mr. BAKER. For the record, I am John A. Baker, coordinator of legislative service, National Farmers' Union.

The National Farmers' Union has felt for some time that effective poultry inspection legislation, as embodied in S. 3176, is badly needed. Knowing the benefits brought by the Meat Inspection Act to all groups of the Nation, we believe that regulatory legislation for poultry procession will do away with many of the serious problems caused in the rapid rise of poultry as major food. Such legislation will minimize the shocking abuses found in some sections of the processing industry-abuses which harm the farmer, the consumer, the industry, and the poultry worker.

Farmers are honest, hard-working, righteous people. They produce food, and an abundance of it, not only to make a living-which many of them are having difficulty doing at the present time-but because they have a deep-rooted love for the land and a desire to raise the best product possible for the consuming public.

If farm products become diseased or adulterated en route to market, the consuming public generally blames the farmer. He becomes the scapegoat for conditions over which he has no control. This is true, by the way, even in the food price situation. Farmers have repeatedly been blamed for high food prices, even though the amount of the food dollar farmers receive has gone down from 52 cents to 38 cents in the past few years, while consumer prices have gone down but little. Since inferior or diseased farm products cast a bad reflection on all farmers, and this is especially true in the poultry business, we are interested in seeing that the reputation of farmers be protected by the enactment of S. 3176, amended as we shall suggest.

Perhaps even more important to the financially hard-pressed poultry farmer is the economic benefits which enactment of S. 3176 as amended will bring to him. The farmer has long ago learned, through the example of meat inspection and other programs, that regulatory measures which provide effective and real consumer protection are good business.

Today, poultry is under a cloud because of the activities of unscrupulous operators in the processing industry. This cloud affects not only the good, as well as the bad, sections of the industry; it also affects the farmer. He has a definite stake in wanting the market for poultry to increase.

In 1954, poultry and poultry products were the third largest source of farm income and accounted for over $4 billion. In the 15 years, 1940 to 1955, poultry production has doubled in size. The farmer wants this growth continued, but he knows very well that to accomplish this, the consumer must have confidence in the wholesomeness and cleanliness of poultry. He knows that the diseased and filthy fowls currently peddled turn consumers from the product. The safeguards for consumers, contained in S. 3176, will bring about consumer confidence in poultry and will, therefore, benefit poultry producers.

Another factor to be considered is that poultry diseases constitute an extremely serious economic hazard to the poultry producers them

selves. A January 4, 1956, news article in the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted the Pennsylvania State poultry pathologist that farmers in Pennsylvania, alone, are losing more than $4 million a year—

because of the high mortality rate in chickens due to respiratory diseases and other ailments.

The pathologist also said, according to the newspaper, is subject to more diseases than any other animal.

that poultry

S. 3176 provides for the rooting out of diseased fowls at the processing, not the farm stage. However, its provisions especially antemortem inspection-will make it possible to detect quickly diseased flocks which, if untreated, may serve to infect large numbers of poultry. Thus, if a trained inspector finds an unusual number of diseased birds coming into a processing plant, the source of the disease can be quickly checked and measures taken to root out the illness before it spreads. Today, the farmer has no such protection.

Also, the research, which will undoubtedly accompany the inspection, and the knowledge gained from the mass program envisaged in S. 3176, will be of tremendous benefit to the farmer. Currently, many of the diseases which seriously endanger poultry flocks on the farm are a mystery to scientists.

The recent Oregon outbreak of psittacosis or parrot fever led scientists to throw up their hands and declare that they still know very little about the illness. But the research and experience which will come with the inspection work will aid the farmer in cutting down his very large losses due to poultry diseases.

Poultry diseases are also a danger to the farmer himself. The Oregon psittacosis epidemic of February and March proved that. The first people hit in the outbreak were farm employees. Not only did a number of them become ill with the pneumonia-like disease, but one died.

For these reasons, the National Farmers Union believes enactment of S. 3176, amended in ways we shall suggest, is important to the farmers of our Nation. We also hope that Congress will turn its attention to further poultry legislation which will provide for disease eradication at the farm stage. Such legislation is vital to the economic welfare of our Nation's poultry producers.

The National Farmers Union has always recognized the need for consumer protection. Not only do we speak for more than a million consumers our members and their families-but we have always believed that it is vital in our democracy for organized groups to take full cognizance of the interests of the largest unorganized unit in our nation, the consumers.

The sale of diseased, contaminated and adulterated poultry constitutes one of the most serious sources of danger to consumer health today. The reports of the Food and Drug Administration and State health units and the testimony presented to this subcommittee by health authorities leave no doubt about that.

The shockingly unsanitary conditions found in some parts of the poultry processing industry are of great concern as a danger to the consuming public. But as if the business dealings of a few unscrupulous operators in the poultry industry were not enough of a cross for the consumer to bear, the product itself accentuates the health dangers,