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Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much, Dr. Hurt.

I must say that all of the members of the panel have presented really exceptional testimony in support of a more coherent program of nutrition research. I especially appreciate your quoting me so extensively, Dr. Hurt.

My statements there do not represent a casual interest. I have felt for a number of years that there was a greater role for the professional community, in both industry and academia, in helping formulate policy plans for the benefit of all of the people of the country.

The Congress attempts to do that, and the executive branch attempts to do that. But we see the difficulties perhaps epitomized in this area of nutrition research where we have a multitude of bureaucracies and a multitude of interests within those bureaucracies reflected. While this is normal, I am not pointing to it as an evil, it still sometimes inhibits the development of a sound, fully articulated policy course which can be supported by all of the resources that we have.

So I am grateful to you for making that point again, and I will continue to raise it as a challenge to the professional community. I would like to ask Mr. MacKay if he would like to raise any questions?

Mr. MACKAY. This last panel has been very helpful to me in getting a better perspective on problems.

I don't really have that much in the way of questions. I didn't quite understand how the two programs tied together, the USDA and the NIH. Dr. Nesheim, I guess, you probably did a good bit to help me understand how those two come together.

In general, would I be summarizing your views if I said that, because of budgetary constraints or otherwise, in fact, the Federal effort is decreasing, declining in terms of budget, as you see these? Dr. NESHEIM. I don't have figures that would support saying it is declining.

What I would say is certainly the Competitive Grants program started out at $5 million a few years ago and, now, I think it is down to about $2 million. That is an extraordinarily small amount of extramural funds that have been put into programs.

Also, from USDA's perspective, those funds are now very restricted in terms of the kinds of things that they can support. I think that, from USDA's perspective, which has a broad mandate in a number of areas in nutrition, that I would like to see the mandates, or at least the guidelines, for the Competitive Grants broadened so it can support a number of the areas of nutrition that USDA has responsibility for.

Mr. BROWN. Would the gentleman yield to me at this point?
Mr. MACKAY. Yes.

Mr. BROWN. I have been a strong proponent of the Competitive Grants program. I helped initiate it, as a matter of fact. And I want to point out what I understand the current situation is. The administration has actually asked for $21 million for Competitive Grants in the Department of Agriculture for agricultural research in general, not just nutrition. Due to longstanding problems within the House, the House Appropriations Committee has cut that in halfor more, down to $10 million-while I think the Senate has gone

along with the administration on this. The problem is not yet resolved. It will be in conference.

This has happened before, and the Congress has resisted appropriating as much as the administration has requested, which is regrettable. I think $21 million is inadequate enough. But if we could at least get that much, the situation for competitive nutrition research grants would be greatly improved, and I think we would be much better off. I hope we can achieve that.

Dr. NESHEIM. I certainly would support that.

In terms of what we see happening in Health and Human Services through NIH, certainly support for individual research grants in general has been declining. I mean, as the numbers have been held constant, as Dr. Rosenberg points out, we have been getting cuts now on individual grants each year.

I chair this coming year the Nutrition Study Section at NIH, and we increasingly are seeing grants that we are able to give what we consider really good priorities not being funded as they come back around the next time. So the support for really good fundamental research, I think, through the NIH system for nutrition, as it is in other areas, is declining.

Mr. MACKAY. Dr. Rosenberg, in your prepared statement, you indicated that you see a strong need for a congressional mandate in this area.

Dr. ROSENBERG. Yes. I think the-as I view it as an outsiderpush and pull of the Federal Government in regard to limited budget-I think we saw from that science article, and so forth, what has happened at the NIH. Organizations outside the NIH, in a sense, mandate major priority decisions which have an enormous impact with individual programs, such as the small but I think the important, program represented by the clinical nutrition research units.

I think that the only way to set that right, two things have to happen. I think Congress has to express its concern that those programs not only continue to be funded, but that that program, in order to achieve its goals, really needs to be expanded by another five or six units, as was originally hoped, and that there is money put into this area so that it does not have to be in direct, head-tohead competition with what I think is the scientific mainstay of the National Institutes of Health, the investigator-initiated grants. So I think that there needs to be an expression of mandate and there needs to be some money.

Mr. MACKAY. Thank you.

Mr. BROWN. Of course, the other side of the coin of my exhortation to professionals to engage in the process of policy planning and assist the Federal Government in achieving more coherent and more effective use of the taxpayers' resources is that nobody is going to listen to you unless you also engage in a certain amount of that dirty activity known as lobbying or political participation, or whatever you want to call it. They are two sides of the same coin. Let me ask you this. All of you, I think, have made reference in one way or another to the National Nutrition Monitoring System and various aspects of it. These programs are not specifically authorized by law. That is, they are not included in any act, nor is there a line item budget for it, as far as I know. I stand to be cor

rected if I am wrong. But my question to all of you is: Do you think that the importance of these programs is sufficient to warrant a specific legislative authorization and perhaps a multiyear funding level to be specified in the appropriate acts of Congress?

Arguments can be made on both sides of this kind of a situation, but I would like to just get your views, off the top of your head. Dr. LEVEILLE. Let me give you one point of view, Congressman. I don't think there is any question but that-in my mind at least this kind of an activity is incredibly important to this country. Health monitoring, including monitoring of nutritional status, should be very clearly an ongoing activity in a country as affluent as the United States. There is simply no excuse, in my mind, for not having an effective program. So, clearly, funding is essential for that, and it probably should be a mandated activity.

But I would go on to point out that whatever the activity ultimately is, it should be part of a clearly defined objective plan, and not the effort scattered amongst several different agencies.

Dr. HURT. I would just agree with Dr. Leveille, with the full realization, though, that to make satisfactory progress in this area of trying to improve human health relayed through nutrition or another means, one must recognize that nutrition is only one small chip in this total mosaic of health. In order to make satisfactory progress, you are going to have to motivate the individual freeliving human being to pay attention, and I think we all march to different drummers. So one must be realistic in the expectations of such a program.

Mr. MACKAY. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. MacKay.

Mr. MACKAY. In some ways, we don't give the American consumer enough credit. I think the consumer is way out ahead of Government in this area. I think the thing that is holding it back-and I hear the medical profession and others say that you can't make the consumer do anything-you can give them good information and they can figure out what is in their own best interest and, right now, they are not getting the best information.

Dr. HURT. I agree.

Mr. MACKAY. That is what I think the role of Government ought to be.

Mr. BROWN. I recognize that HANES, for example, is merely a subset of our needs as far as epidemiological activities and a number of different areas. It is, in effect, an effort to relate health and nutrition, but we need to relate health to other things as well as nutrition.

One of the arguments that could be used against specific authorization for HANES, for example, or other such activities, is that it is only a partial answer to the health and epidemiological research needs of the country. I don't know how to appropriately weight this argument. In a sense, I am not sure what significance we should give to health and nutrition surveys as compared to, say, exposure to carcinogens in the environment in general or something like that, which we also perhaps need, I don't know.

Dr. NESHEIM. Could I just make one comment on this?

One of the things that we do in my own department at our center, funded by the Agency for International Development, is