Mr. CAMERON. Yes.

Mr. REIDY. Would that be true of the representatives of the Red Meat Inspection Division of the Department of Agriculture?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes, I think we have excellent working relationships with Dr. Havorka, who is the regional chief in charge of meat inspection. Our departmental cooperation has been very good.

Mr. REIDY. Were you here this morning when I read from Dr. Cleere's letter his report of a very difficult situation which apparently arose because of a shipment by the Production and Marketing Administration to your State welfare department?

Was it the city of Denver which was involved in that situation? Mr. CAMERON. Yes, it was.

Mr. REIDY. I wonder if you would mind giving us the picture as you saw it.

Mr. CAMERON. To say the least, it was an unfortunate situation. I will not take the time of the committee to go into all the details. In 1953 some 3 to 4 carloads of turkeys were received in Denver. Through our inspectors and with the aid of the Federal Food and Drug Administration we took certain action on these turkeys. The part which you refer to, which was most disturbing to our department, was that when we attempted in a cooperative spirit to work out the problems, realizing that the Agricultural Marketing Service, which was involved in the purchase, the inspection and actual sales of these products might be embarrassed. The action which the AMS took after they asked us to bring the turkeys back from the possession of the schools and turn them over to them for further investigation was most disconcerting. I would like to read from our report on this on this matter dated February 6, 1953:

On this date Mr. Franklin Fisk

who is my assistant

held a conference with Dr. Florio

who is the manager (commissioner) of health and hospitals—

as to what further action our department should take. Dr. Florio received a

call

this refers to a telephone call—

from S. E. Paul, attorney for the local office of the United States Department of Agriculture. At this time Mr. Paul said he felt that the department of health and hospitals had no right to retain or condemn the turkeys in question and that in his opinion the United States Department of Agriculture, Production and Marketing Administration

as the AMS was known at that time—

could dispose of the turkeys as they saw fit.

Mr. REIDY. How did you feel that you had a right to seize them? Mr. CAMERON. We were concerned that the children of Denver were being offered this as food and we, as persons charged by law to protect their health, should make every effort to carry out this protection. The thing that concerned the department, was that the AMS asked our department to have the turkeys brought back into their possession, and as soon as we did comply with this request this is what happened. I continue to read from our report:

On this date (February 7, 1953) we were notified by Mr. Leslie Gross, assistant city attorney, that he had received a call from Mr. Paul who had notified him

that unless the department of health and hospitals released the turkeys for shipment to Omaha we would hold the individuals in the department of health and hospitals liable under Federal law for the retention and destruction of Federal property.

Mr. REIDY. Why did the Department want to get this condemnedat least by your standards-shipment of condemned poultry back? Mr. CAMERON. It goes on to say here in our report:

Mr. Paul further stated that he had been informed by the Production and Marketing Administration that they wished to take the turkeys to Omaha so that parts of the product could be canned under supervision.

We reminded him that such action-when I say "we" I mean the Department-reminded him that such action was contrary to Federal food and drug regulations.

Mr. REIDY. Could you enlarge on that a bit? The Production and Marketing Administration, you say, wanted to take this poultry and ship it and perhaps if possible to take out the diseased parts and use the rest. You say that is contrary to food and drug regulations?

Mr. CAMERON. The Federal food and drug law, which I can't quote exactly, has one section in it which specifically prohibits the processing, canning, and sale of food which in whole or in part is putrid, unwholesome, adulterated, et cetera.

Mr. REIDY. By the health standards of the city of Denver and the State of Colorado you would feel that you should not take poultry in that condition and cull out the good part and say we are processing only that which contains no bad parts?

Mr. CAMERON. We feel this would be not only a violation of Federal food and drug law, but it would be a violation of the State food and drug law. In this case they were going to take the turkeys to Nebraska. What Nebraska's law is I don't know, but as far as our State is concerned, this would be a violation of the State food and drug law.

Mr. REIDY. The officials of your department were threatened with legal action for this attempt to prevent a departure from Federal food and drug regulations?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes.

Mr. REIDY. In Dr. Cleare's letter he refers to a representative of the inspection service of the Production and Marketing Administration making an inspection of a poultry establishment located in the city of Denver. This establishment had been closed by the local authorities for noncompliance with municipal statutes and State regulations.

Without the knowledge of local authorities this plant was approved by Federal poultry inspection.

Are you acquainted with that situation, sir?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes; I am fairly well acquainted with it. It is pretty much as it is stated there. In all fairness, we were able to work it out. However, in my opinion we still do not have clearcut assurances that it will not happen again because, if our regulations are more stringent than the Federal regulations, and I don't believe they are, the AMS cannot stop a poultry plant from opening up. This is a hard thing for me to adjust in my own mind because I have always felt that, if a local health department said a place could not open, at least we could expect cooperation on the part of any State or Federal agency to go along with us.

Mr. REIDY. In this case you had cooperation on the part of the State agency?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes.

Mr. REIDY. This was a plant which had been closed down by local action?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes; it had been closed by our department.

Mr. REIDY. Presumably they opened under licensure from the Agricultural Marketing Service.

Mr. CAMERON. To the best of my knowledge that is true.

Mr. REIDY. Presumably they could not sell any of their product from their plant in the city of Denver or the State of Colorado. Mr. CAMERON. Not under our law.

Mr. REIDY. The only thing this man could do would be to invoke the power of the Federal Government and the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture to run a substandard plant in Colorado and then ship his birds outside to sell to unsuspecting States.

Mr. CAMERON. Actually he could not do it because I believe in this case we have power by which we could step in and still close him even though it might be a little rough on us in case of legal action to face the fact that a Federal agency had approved the plant and we had not. Mr. REIDY. Has the red meat inspection division of the Department of Agriculture ever approved a plant to your knowledge that was violating local health statutes?

Mr. CAMERON. No, sir. We have had a number of plants which have gone from our inspection to the red meat inspection service, and in those cases we were called in to review plans of the new construction. Our standards are written practically word for word after the Federal meat inspection law. So there has been no problem.

Mr. REIDY. Has the Food and Drug Administration ever approved for operation a plant which you had condemned or the State or local health agency had said was substandard that you know of?

Mr. CAMERON. No.

Mr. REIDY. Has any agency of the Federal Government, with the sole exception of the Agricultural Marketing Service program, ever approved for operation a plant which State or local authorities had condemned as substandard?

Mr. CAMERON. None to my knowledge.

Mr. REIDY. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CAMERON. There is one other statement I would like to make, Mr. Reidy, if I may, to emphasize a point here. It is something that concerns us as local public health people. I am now talking about the statement of Mr. Harvey, and Dr. Sussman mentioned it, too.

We in local municipal work are the people who are fighting in the frontline of public health. When the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare states that they feel that poultry inspection is a function of Agriculture without consulting the thousands of public health workers working in municipal agencies at the State level, but particularly municipal agencies, we feel that what we say here should be given some recognition. We in the local agencies, representing thousands of public health workers out there on the frontline, still maintain and still feel that this inspection work on the Federal level should be placed in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Mr. REIDY. Thank you.

One more question I forgot to ask refers again to the production and marketing situation in Denver. If I remember correctly, you said that the Department said that they wanted to take back the birds, reprocess them, and then can the good parts. Is that correct?

Mr. CAMERON. Yes.

Mr. REIDY. I suppose that in canning them they would put them through a cooking process. Does cooking or canning kill all the disease germs which might be a danger in poultry?

Mr. CAMERON. I would say, in a great majority of the cases, yes.

I am a sanitary engineer with training in bacteriology. I would say yes. However

Mr. REIDY. Most of them but not all of them?

Mr. CAMERON. The thought of cooking a decomposed piece of meat is esthetically quite repulsive.

Mr. REIDY. Is Dr. Sussman still here?

Dr. SUSSMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. REIDY. I am sorry. I think perhaps I addressed a question to the wrong witness. Would you mind answering that one more question? Does cooking or whatever process is involved in the canning of the sort of poultry that the city of Denver and the State of Colorado condemned, remove all possibilities of disease?

Dr. SUSSMAN. Mr. Reidy. I have a reference in my office, but I think there is a reference here to this. There is a reference to food research. If I read that as contained in some other testimony, I think that might answer some of your problem. They were referring to salmonella, and they said:

Studies concerning salmonella infections

which is a type of infection similar to salmonella typhoid. It is not salmonella which produces typhoid fever, but it does produce a fever and nausea and diarrhea which lasts sometimes for 3 or 4 days on the part of people. It is not fatal but sometimes you wish it were fatal. In any event

Studies concerning the salmonella infections showed that certain types of organisms survive long-heated oil baths.

Here are the results of a study on the organism in roasted and broiled chickens.

This is from Food Research, 16: 39–96, 1951. They quote:

Thus, while the percentage of viable salmonella cells destroyed by broiling was very high, in no case was an infected chicken rendered free of such bacteria under the conditions of these experiments.

Certainly, neither broiling nor roasting chickens by presently recommended practices freed them completely of viable salmonella cells when present. This was true in spite of the fact that in some cases the temperature was above 100 degrees Centigrade or 212 degrees Fahrenheit for a period of time.

This was a study made by Husseman, Dorthly L. Husseman and Margaret A. Wallis.

I don't know the actual study, but I do know that there are organisms that are not destroyed by the heating which sometimes is necessary to cook the product. However, in the case of canned food products, I think you can assume that no matter how filthy the product is, no matter how much of the organisms are in it, it could be cooked like cooked garbage, and it would still be edible without producing disease in the person. Of course you wouldn't want to eat that, and I don't think any industry wants to do that.

Mr. REIDY. You wouldn't recommend it for school-lunch programs financed by the United States Government?

Dr. SUSSMAN. No, sir.

Mr. REIDY. Thank you, Doctor.

The hearing is recessed until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. We will reconvene in room F-41 in the Senate wing of the Capitol.

(Mr. Barker's complete statement and additional material follow :) STATEMENT BY SHIRLEY W. BARKER, DIRECTOR, POULTRY DEPARTMENT, AMALGAMATED MEAT CUTTERS AND BUTCHER WORKMEN OF NORTH AMERICA (AFLCIO)

My name is Shirley W. Barker. I am the director of the poultry department of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America (AFL-CIO), a labor union with 315,000 members and more than 500 locals in the 48 States, Alaska, and Canada.

Poultry processing is the procedure of changing the healthy, live bird, covered outside and filled inside with filth, to a clean item of food. Each step in this procedure should remove some of the filth or inedible material, making the remaining portions progressively cleaner.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, in many poultry plants in our Nation today, the definition of processing is only an ideal. In many plants not only the healthy bird but also the diseased one, is processed. The outside and inside filth is only superficially removed. And the bird does not become progressively cleaner, but is actually contaminated by a scandalous lack of sanitation.

I. CONDITIONS IN POULTRY-PROCESSING PLANTS

As I shall show with statistics later, the poultry industry has undergone a phenomenal growth in the last two decades. What was once little more than a home industry is today a multi-billion-dollar business.

The fast growth of the industry has enticed many shoddy investors into poultry processing. It has become a target for a larger-than-usual number of operators who seek a quick and easy profit no matter what dangers or consequences result to the public or the industry. The processing plants of these men are the main source of the contaminated and unfit poultry on the market. The failure of the Federal Government to establish and enforce standards of cleanliness and wholesomeness make their shoddy operations possible and is, thereby, responsible for the principal health dangers now stemming from poultry processing.

To meet the competition of the chiselers and let me say that the poultryprocessing industry is highly competitive many good and honest processors are forced to lower their standards. They cannot introduce and maintain the sanitary facilities and standards they would like. They cannot offer the quality of poultry they would otherwise put on the market.

As a result of the operation of the unscrupulous and the lowering of standards, some shocking conditions prevail in parts of the poultry-processing industry. Diseased and sometimes dead birds are processed and sent to market like healthy, live ones. Processing is done amidst filth, such as waste from the birds. Dust, dirt, and fecal matter is often insufficiently removed and is allowed to contaminate cleaned birds. Sanitary facilities are primitive or even nonexistent.

These conditions prevail virtually unhindered by State or Federal legislation. The Department of Agriculture maintains a voluntary nonregulatory program of inspection, which is hired and paid for by the processor. It covers only about 20 percent of poultry in interstate commerce. It has serious defects which limits its effectiveness on even this fraction of poultry sold. The Food and Drug Administration currently does not have the authority or funds to keep inspectors in processing plants so that they may inspect each carcass for wholesomeness and enforce standards of sanitation and sanitary practices. It can make only spot checks and seize shipments when violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, as now written, occur. State inspection legislation is virtually nonexistent. At best, the States can now undertake the same spot check and seizure activity as the Food and Drug Administration does on the Federal level. In short, the consumer and poultry worker currently has no adequate protection from any governmental source.