mentions no trade names or products, and is educational rather than commercial in nature, thus making it usable and intensely popular with radio stations.

This program is provided to the stations in the form of a transcription along with recipes featured on the programs. We find that a number of these radio stations are selling this program to food distributors, many of whom in turn are featuring the various meats given in these recipes as weekly specials in their own store promotion.

Having seen now this picture of this program, may we point out that at no time in its history has the board purchased advertising space or time on radio and television,and this service program of information on meat goes out over the air daily at no cost to the board other than that of providing the transcription and the original recipes. Envision if you will what this program would cost if purchased and produced at regular rates for comparable type programs commercially sponsored.

At this present time the board has in the field 10 graduate home economists. Last year this staff presented 52 newspaper- and radio-sponsored cooking schools-4-day schools-with an average daily attendance of 1,506 women, each provided with a 36-page meat cookbook. Straight meat copy used in the newspapers in connection with these individual schools would have resembled the Sunday editions of several metropolitan newspapers. This year there will be over 60 of these schools.

In addition to these 4-day schools, the board's home economists conducted last year 504 special meat-cooking schools, these being schools before homemakers, college and high school classes, meetings of professional home economists, extension workers, home economics teachers, and others. Included in these schools were workshops across the Nation with school lunchroom supervisors— and at this point, your Department of Agriculture has called upon the board's staff on numerous occasions to assist in the school lunch program. This service, of course, was gladly provided by the board.

Included in the board's field staff of home economists is a colored home economist, devoting her efforts to the colored people of the southern section of the country, providing them through their colleges, high schools, their radio stations, and their Extension Service the latest information on meat. Here is another fertile field for increasing meat consumption.

Each year a new group of home economics college graduates enters the teaching field. Through the years the board has provided these college graduates with a meat teaching kit. This chart shows the 343 colleges that were supplied with 4,329 meat teaching kits for their graduating home economics students last year. This year the number will exceed 5,000 kits.

Information of a technical nature on the place of meat in the diet is provided in a monthly publication that went last year to almost 15,000 professional people-physicians, dentists, dietitians and the like, distributed across the Nation as shown on this chart. Truly technical information on meat for technical people, who do so much toward influencing our eating habits.

It is axiomatic in the promotion world today if you want to sell a product, sell it to the teen-agers in the family. The board in alternate years sponsors a high school meat poster contest. A contest was held in 1956 and some 20,000 students in 1,100 high schools in 47 States entered that contest. Cash prizes were awarded the winners, and likewise the teachers, to help stimulate interest in meat among these young people, who will be the mothers and fathers of tomorrow. This chart shows the number of high schools per State entering the contest. Last year over 61⁄2 million people saw the board's meat exhibits. Ninety-six of these exhibits were designed especially for consumers, these being exhibits at the Nation's leading livestock shows, fairs, and expositions, 16 of which were fresh meat exhibits at State fairs and the like. New fresh meat exhibits were shown for the first time at the Minnesota, Kentucky, and Tulsa fairs and expositions. The coolers alone in the fresh meat exhibits represent investments on the part of the fairs and shows ranging from $8,500 to $15,000-truly a remarkable opportunity to display meat at its best.

Sixteen exhibits were shown at professional meetings. These were educational exhibits geared to the story of the nutritive value of meat and the methods used in its cookery. These were shown at such meetings as the American Medical Association, dental and other medical specialists groups, as well as meetings of

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the American Dietetic Association, American Home Economics Association, the National School Food Service Association and the like. These exhibits, both for consumers and professional people, are maintained by members of the board's staff who are present to distribute literature and answer questions concerning meat.

Most of us remember a good deal more of what we see than what we hear. Consequently, the board has made use of visual aids in the meat teaching field throughout the years. The board has distributed for permanent loan 23,581 film strips teaching meat cookery. Each of these filmstrips is complete with a narrative and shows over 50 colored pictures on the various steps in meat cookery. This chart shows the nationwide distribution of these filmstrips to professional home economists.

All of us are aware of the tremendous impact of movies on American life, and the board has been in this field for some time. Two movies, each over 30 minutes in length, were produced 17 and 14 years ago by the board. One of these dealt primarily with the nutritive value of meat, and the other wtih meat and its use by the family. Over 400 prints of these movies have been in circulation constantly and they are still enjoying a nationwide reception.

During the past 3 years the board has produced 7 additional movies, each in full color, 15 minutes in length, and designed for use on television or showing to live audiences. One of these seven deals with the nutritive value of meat, one with outdoor meat cookery, one each with beef, pork and lamb, and two with meat cookery. Two of these movies have been placed in circulation only within the past 6 months. However, the 2 later movies and 5 of the more recent ones were shown last year over 23,000 times. This map shows the distribution of the bookings of these movies by States. However, with the addition of 100 prints each of 7 new movies, making a total of 1,100 prints of 9 movies now in circulation, at the current rate of showings somewhere in the United States a meat board movie is being shown every 5 minutes.

Just this week we completed the shooting of three more. These are 4-minute beef movies to be given nationwide distribution in special beef promotions. One of these deals with freezing beef; another with cooking frozen beef; and the third, with broiling steaks. These are designed primarily for use as features on television programs of interest to women.

When the movie on outdoor cookery was announced last summer 67 television stations booked this film for showing within less than 10 days' time, attesting to the intense interest in this subject.

The 7 movies in circulation last year were shown 389 times on television, on 102 stations, in areas served by 26 million TV sets.

While the board's meat movies have received wide distribution, this is not the only method by which the meat story is taken to the TV audience through efforts of the board. Directors of women's TV programs provide food information to their viewers constantly, and to aid in the dissemination of information the board is supplying 131 TV stations with a weekly meats program, a "HowTo-Do-It With Meat" service featuring meat cookery and menu planning around meat. While this service is provided in the form of copy and pictures for use on camera, we find that over half of the women's program directors on these stations are going out and buying the meat and actually preparing the dishes on camera. Again, this program represents the use of the latest media of mass information and communication in reaching the Nation's homemakers.

In addition, during the past year the board's staff members appeared as guests on 298 live TV programs, demonstrating the latest techniques and methods of meat cutting, cooking and carving, as well as presenting information dealing with the selection, care, and nutritive value of meat. One series of these programs, for example, dealt with meat in the reducing diet, where a member of the Board's Nutrition Department appeared on the live TV program, showing typical reducing diets using liberal amounts of meat. The board, in turn, provided the TV station with a booklet on reducing, which included the menus for a typical reducing diet. The booklet was offered to viewers who would write in for it. In one instance, over 6,500 viewers wrote to the station requesting the bookletthis as a result of only 3 programs on the subject of weight reducing. This chart shows the coverage by television of the live programs which were participated in by the board staff members and the coverage of the board's movies a grand total of 687 meats programs on 263 TV stations last year.

Reference has already been made to work in cooperation with the Nation's land-grant colleges, but this chart indicating a continuing meat program with the land-grant colleges points up specifically some of the major activities which the Board helped initiate and is carrying on through the years.

The first of these is the Reciprocal Meat Conference, the tenth annual of which will be held in June of this year. The board is host to this annual conference of the scientific and research men dealing with the subject of meat not only in the Nation's land-grant colleges, but also in the Department of Agriculture. These men gather for a 4-day conference under the board's auspices and compare the latest techniques in the field of meat teaching, research, and extension. These scientific papers are published by the board and become the official proceedings of the conference, and as such are a part of college libraries across the Nation and serve as reference material on the subject of meat research, education and teaching. These annual proceedings include a considerable portion of the cataloged and published material on the subject of meat.

This year the board is sponsoring three undergraduate clinics for agricultural college students in the field of animal husbandry and meat. Last year the second of these clinics was held at Omaha, attended for 3 days by 99 agricultural college students and their professors from 11 of the land-grant colleges in the central part of the country. Three days were spent in evaluating live animals and estimating such factors as dressing percentage, carcass grade, and in the case of hogs, back-fat thickness, body length and the like.

In cooperation with the packers on these markets where the clinics are held, the animals are slaughtered and the last day of the clinic are viewed in the coolers for final evaluation. A special feature of these clinics is to invite key representatives in the meat packing, meat retailing, meat merchandising, and the restaurant field, as well as representatives of the livestock marketing industry and the Deaprtment of Agriculture, to appear before these future industry leaders and point out to them job opportunities and challenges within the industry.

It is the feeling of the board that in these days of industry competition for keen, alert college graduates that our agricultural college graduates are entitled to a closer look at the meat industry.

This year one of these clinics was held in Nashville, with representatives from 12 colleges, totaling 130 in attendance. A clinic is being held in Oklahoma City this week, where the southwestern colleges will be represented with a like number of college students. A similar meeting is scheduled later this month in Ogden, Utah, rounding out a nationwide program that will not only provide a service by way of live animal and carcass evaluation, but will also give those attending a chance to consider job oportunities in the industry.

A key feature of the clinics this year has been the appearance of administrative officers of the Department of Agriculture, who have discussed with these college students the challenges and opportunities in Government service in the fields of research, market supervision, market news service, and Federal standardization and grading. The full cooperation of representatives of the Market News Service and the Standardization and Grading Service has helped make possible the success of these clinics.

For 27 years now, the board has been sponsoring intercollegiate meat judging contests. Naturally, the real purpose of these contests is to stimulate interest in the study of the subject of meat in the Nation's land-grant colleges and to put it on a competitive basis with other contests in which college students participate. Last year there were 16 college meat-judging teams entered at the American Royal Live Stock Show at Kansas City; 10 at the Eastern National in Maryland; 23 at the International Live Stock Exposition in Chicago; and 9 at the Southwestern Exposition in Fort Worth.

The board is proud of the record of accomplishment on the part of the Nation's land-grant colleges in meat education and it feels that whatever stimulus it may have given to the program of teaching the subject of meat has been an aid in the establishment of full-time meat courses of study in some 36 of these schools. The contribution of this meat education program can never be adequately measured as its results will go on through the years.

Now let's take a look at some of the services of the board provided in a merchandising program for the Nation's retailers and restaurateurs.

A key service is the development of new and improved meat-cutting methods for the industry. This has been one of the Board's primary activities through the years and many of the current cutting methods and meat cuts available in

the Nation's markets today are the direct result of this effort on the part of the board. To accomplish this, retailer meetings are held across the country and the board's staff members stay in constant touch with all developments in meat merchandising and retailing, and its offices serve as a clearing house for information in this respect.

The board further provides, through the work of its expert meat merchandising staff, meat sales ideas to retailers to help them in moving product. Moreover, the public and institutional feeding field, including restaurants, hotels, school lunchrooms, hospitals, nursing homes, children's homes, homes for the aged-in fact, all types of public feeding institutions-are assisted by the board not only with demonstrations and schools, but with published material both in the board's own publications and in the trade press.

Among those calling on the board for assistance in feeding large numbers of people have been the armed services of the Nation. In fact, many of the cutting, cooking, and feeding methods now in use by the armed services were provided them by the board, as a result of cooperative effort particularly late in World War II and the years intervening since.

To accomplish effective merchandising programs to aid retailers and restaurateurs has required through the years literally hundreds of meetings, large and small, with retailers and restaurateurs, all eager to learn of the latest methods in meat merchandising.

No presentation of the board's program would be complete without reference to the work of the national meat promotion committee, set into motion in 1955 at the request of the industry to initiate and aid in coordinating nationwide emergency sales promotion campaigns for beef, pork and lamb.

In the early months of 1955, when hog prices began to drop seriously and evidence continued to pile up that even more stringent price drops were ahead, the officers of the board called a nationwide meeting in Chicago to discuss the coming crisis in the pork industry. Some 75 leaders of the industry were present at this meeting, in which problems ahead were pointed up by the Under Secretary of Agriculture, calling attention to the need of well coordinated industry-wide programs of sales promotion if pork was to continue to move through market channels. Present at this meeting were representatives of producer groups, general farm organizations, livestock marketing agencies, meatpackers. restaurateurs, and retailers.

It became apparent at this meeting that the Nation's retailers 350,000 of them--who in reality are the meat industry's salesmen, that they not only had the Nation's pork supply to move, but likewise recordbreaking supplies of beef and substantial quantities of poultry and lamb as well.

The cooperation of the Nation's retailers in intense campaigns was assured by them, provided producers of livestock agreed as to times in which their product needed special promotion and asked for special emergency promotional help when needed to move their product into consumption.

Subsequently a committee representing producers of beef, pork, and lamb, as well as poultry marketing agencies, restaurateurs, retailers, packers, the general farm organizations and the board, was set up as the national meat promotion committee to initiate and coordinate nationwide emergency sales promotion campaigns. In recent years meat promotion and continuing sales campaigns have called for annual expenditures of over $50 million on the part of the Nation's packers, and over $50 million on the part of the Nation's retailers in the advertising of meat.

The secretary-general manager of the board was named as chairman of this committee and charged with the responsibility of calling it together from time to time to observe the situation in the months ahead and determine which of the individual meats would require special attention. In order to accomplish this it has been necessary to call upon economists not only in the Department of Agriculture, but also economists within the industry, who have pooled their collective thinking to serve as a guide in setting up these emergency meat sales promotion campaigns for beef, pork, lamb, and poultry.

Cooperation in this program has been in the tradition of free enterprise with free discussion and deliberation being used in setting objective goals. Special emergency campaigns for specific meats in distress have been part of the board's program since its beginning, and on many occasions through the years has fostered special drives for beef, pork, lamb, or lard as the need arose.

The board is proud it has been able to play a part in these emergency campaigns by way of providing not only information and services, but also by the provision of sales aids to the Nation's retailers and restaurateurs such as are outlined in these trade association letters, just to quote several-this one from the National Association of Food Chains and this one from the National Association of Retail Grocers, in which the officers are calling to the attention of their respective memberships the sales aids available through the board.

In one of these recent campaigns over 2,000 meat photos were provided upon request to meat retailers for use in their own advertising campaigns. Shortly we will, in discussing distribution of meat literature, show you some of the sales aids provided retailers and restaurateurs in these campaigns participated in by all segments of the industry, with livestock growers and feeders, general farm organizations, independent packers, and packers' organizations, all putting forth their best efforts to keep the products moving into consumption.

Reference has already been made to the national distribution of meat literature. This chart shows some of the distribution of this literature to elementary schools, high schools and trade schools, colleges and universities, professional groups, homemakers, agricultural organizations, meatpackers, retail meat trade, marketing agencies, restaurant operators, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, magazines, industry papers, trade journals, State fairs and livestock expositions, and research and medical publications.

Perhaps the use of these displays will show this committee better than we can tell you in words some of the over 100 publications currently circulated by the board. The national distribution of this literature runs into millions of copies. First board: Meat teaching material for elementary schools; nutrition materials for professional groups; and meat teaching material for high schools and colleges.

Second board: Merchandising literature for retailers and restaurateurs; and educational meat literature for consumers.

Third board: Exclusive service on meat for TV stations; special services on meat for radio stations; and meat pictures and copy for newspapers.

Fourth board: Industry relations material explains board's program; board's meat photos used widely by many interests; motion pictures and filmstrips on meat; 2 filmstrips; and 9 motion pictures for nationwide TV and group showings. Obviously this program has required sizable financial resources. The annual report of the board which your clerk has in his possession includes a statement of receipts and expenditures. This map shows the sources of revenue from livestock markets.

For the first 5 to 6 years of the board's history its funds were derived from voluntary contributions at the Nation's terminal markets on the part of livestock growers and feeders of 5 cents per car on livestock, these funds being matched by packers. Subsequently these funds were raised to 25 cents per car, or 1 cent per head on cattle, one-third cent per head on hogs and calves, and one-fifth cent per head on sheep and lambs, with these sums again being matched by cooperating packers.

As changes came about in the marketing pattern, collections were also started on the auction markets and by packers who purchased directly from the grower either at their plants or at country concentration points, these funds still being matched by the packers. However, throughout the board's history the keystone of its financial structure has been the voluntary contribution of the livestock grower and feeder collected by the livestock commission firms on the Nation's terminal markets, and is still today the chief source of income.

All these collections are made as a service by the marketing agencies or by the packers making the collections, there being no costs against these collections charged back by the markets, it being their feeling their contribution to this program of meat research, education, and promotion is that of making the collections for it.

In addition to these funds, voluntary contributions on the part of livestock associations, particularly in the southwestern area of the country, such as the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association, the Arizona Cattle Feeders Association, and numerous other associations as well as purebred associations, have been made to the board through the years in amounts that annually totaled from $20,000 to $30,000. The total of these funds has been matched in contributions, dollar for dollar, by the American Meat Institute. These sources, plus individual contributions from livestock