STATEMENT OF MRS. LORETTA JOHNSON, PUBLIC RELATIONS ADVISER, ST. LOUIS CONSUMER FEDERATION, ST. LOUIS, MO.

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Johnson, identify yourself for the record. Mrs. JOHNSON. I am Loretta Johnson, of 4416 Westminster Place, St. Louis 8, Mo. I am a member of and public relations adviser to the St. Louis Consumer Federation, and I am here to represent that federation.

The aims of the St. Louis Consumer Federation are to inform and educate consumers to become more intelligent buyers; and to see that the interests of consumers are represented and protected in legislation. We operate entirely with volunteers and have no paid officers or personnel. A week ago today, on Founders Day celebrating the 104th anniversary of the founding of Washington University, our former chairman, Marion Wilson Weir, received an alumni citation from the graduate school of social work in part—

because of her tremendous personal leadership *** as chairman of the St. Louis Consumer Federation *** and because of her effective work in advancing consumer interests over the Nation as a director of the National Association of Consumers. ***

The St. Louis Consumer Federation believes that it is economically correct to prevent disease whenever possible, rather than to pay for the cure of it. Therefore, and on behalf of the federation, I am here to plead for mandatory Federal inspection of poultry and poultry products for wholesomeness. This plea, we believe, is in the interest of public health and of value to workers in the poultry industry and to

consumers.

We believe that poultry inspection must be at the Federal level-as meat inspection is-since much of the poultry and poultry products cross State boundaries.

I may add here that a Missouri farmers' association participates in the poultry inspection now going on but they ship their poultry to California, and it is never sold in the St. Louis market because interstate poultry that comes into the St. Louis market is sold at prices that make it impossible for our Missouri farmer who has taken precautions, to compete with it, and we feel that everywhere that interstate commerce affects this problem, that Federal legislation is the only possible answer to it.

We plead also for compulsory Federal inspection of poultry and poultry products in some intrastate areas, particularly around big cities, if the intrastate poultry and poultry products sold in the city affect or burden the conditions under which interstate poultry is shipped into that city.

We ask that poultry inspectors be employees of the Government rather than of the firms whom they inspect.

We ask that every poultry carcass and all poultry products that have been federally inspected and passed be stamped by a Federal stamp as is meat; and that the stamp be large enough to be easily read with the naked eye. The stamps that are now put on poultryand heavens, we don't want to criticize anybody who is inspecting their poultry, but even so you just could not read it when you are buying it in the grocery store.

We believe, after careful study, that the least expensive way to provide for effective poultry inspection is by amendment of the Meat

Inspection Act (34 Stat. 1260, as amended) and the Tariff Act of 1930 (46 Stat. 689, sec. 306) by adding poultry and poultry products to the list of animals and animal products to be inspected for wholesomeness. For 50 years the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 has been quite successful in protecting consumers against meats which are unwholesome, unhealthful, or otherwise unfit for human food. By adopting the standards and definitions of the Meat Inspection Act, long-drawn-out litigations and discussions over terminology would be avoided and still provide for ante mortem and post mortem inspection of poultry.

We want to especially underline the request for ante mortem inspection of poultry. We feel that the need of ante mortem inspection may be open to some discussion, but we feel that the discovery of, certainly, the respiratory diseases, seems to definitely establish the fact it is much more readily accomplished while the animal is still on the hoof.

We believe Federal inspection of poultry for wholesomeness will have a beneficial effect for small packers, because the Federal stamp on each carcass will assure consumers that the poultry sold by the little packers is just as wholesome as that sold by the bigger packers who have advertising advantage. Federal inspection will open up new markets for small packers of poultry-as it has in the case of meat inspection-and will enlarge their purchasing power, so that they can compete more readily with bigger packers; it will also give retail stores more choice as to whom they will go to buy their poultry and poultry products.

Our experience as housewives has taught us the meaning of the adage, "a stitch in time saves nine"; we therefore plead that any proposed compulsory inspection bill or amendment to the Meat Inspection Act be searched for loopholes; and that any loopholes found be mended before the bill or amendment is passed into law.

We feel that a poor poultry bill might well be worse than no bill at all.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Any questions?

All right, next is Mrs. Booras.

Will you come forward, Mrs. Booras, and identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF MRS. J. A. BOORAS, ASSISTANT TO THE LEGISLATIVE CHAIRMAN, HOUSEWIVES UNITED

Mrs. BOORAS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, Housewives United is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit group of women interested chiefly in the welfare of their families. We therefore feel very strongly that effective legislation should be passed-to insure compulsory inspection of fowls, both before and after slaughter, by adding a Poultry Inspection Section to the Agricultural Research Service.

Poultry raising is no longer a small, home industry, as it used to be, It is now an enormous business enterprise-with the attendant risks that come from carelessness or greed when things are done on a large scale.

From our point of view, we have heard too much for too long about "filthy and diseased fowl"; about fowl that had "died otherwise than

by slaughter"; and about chickens that had had the chief evidence of their disease, as, for instance, a wing covered with sores, chopped off-after which the rest of the chicken was then processed along with other, wholesome birds and our own experience of tasteless fowls and fowls with discolored livers, to have the confidence that we should have when buying poultry in a country as enlightened and health conscious as the United States.

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.

Nor is it 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. There were times when we were sure it was the chicken we ate that made us sick since there are many diseases of poultry to which man is susceptible, and some unexplained illness could well be caused by the consumption of bad fowls.

We feel that poultry inspection should be automatic for birds 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.

Many housewives have had an erroneous belief that poultry was federally inspected along with red meat, so that we need to close the gap on this long-overdue legislation. And if red meat should be inspected (and we certainly believe that it should), why then should not poultry be inspected as well?

Certainly the passage of S. 1128 should help the poultry industry; inspection before killing will help to spot disease in a flock, thus saving part of a poultry raiser's stock in trade. Inspection after slaughter, by requiring the same standards of care and sanitation for all, will insure fair business competition and wholesome poultry for the consumer.

Therefore, we believe that a compulsory and meaningful poultryinspection bill will protect the poultry consumer, poultry processor, poultry worker, poultry farmer, and industry as well. We hope for early passage of S. 1128.

I wish to thank this committee on behalf of Housewives United for having been afforded this opportunity to be heard.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Booras. Any questions?

All right, next is Mrs. Dennis Jackson.

Mrs. Jackson, will you come forward and identify yourself for the record?

STATEMENT OF MRS. DENNIS JACKSON, PRESIDENT, CONSUMER CONFERENCE OF GREATER CINCINNATI, CINCINNATI, OHIO

Mrs. JACKSON. I am Mrs. Dennis Jackson and I represent the Consumer Conference of Greater Cincinnati, which is made up of 900 paid members and over 50 affiliated clubs who report back to us and

of course through these we reach many thousands of people. The conference has tried to educate consumers through meetings and publications concerning their economic problems, which includes support of legislation in the consumers' interest.

We urge passage of a compulsory poultry-inspection law under the supervision of the Meat Inspection Branch of the Agricultural Research Service. This Branch has done an excellent job for 50 years of meat inspection. We want the same kind of consumer protection service for poultry, the sale of which has very greatly increased recently because of its cheaper cost.

This inspection should be done both before and after slaughter. A large part of illness from food comes from poultry due, perhaps, to lack of inspection. Each carcass should be inspected by inspectors who meet the same requirements as those for red-meat inspectors and should be paid in the same way so they would be rsponsible to the same officials in the Agriculture Department.

Cincinnati is close to two State lines and also receives large shipments of poultry from Georgia, but the law should not only include out-of-State shipments but those within the State, too.

And we feel that the inspection laws should cover both products within the State and in interstate commerce and so we urge passage of this law.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Jackson.

All right, is anybody else present who desires to be heard?

All right, will you step forward and state your full name for the record?

STATEMENT OF MARTIN L. LIVNEY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN POULTRY FARMERS ASSOCIATION, INC., VINELAND, N. J.

Mr. LIVNEY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Martin L. Livney, and I live in Vineland, N. J., and I am president of the American Poultry Farmers Association, Inc.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you a prepared statement?

Mr. LIVNEY. No.

Now, when I came here this morning I heard a Senator making a definition or a statement about a cull and I think he was the Senator-Senator Williams, you made a definition or something about a cull?

Senator WILLIAMS. You are asking me

The CHAIRMAN. A definition of a what?

Mr. LIVNEY. Cull, c-u-1-1.

The CHAIRMAN. Óh, I thought you said cow. All right, we won't argue about that. Proceed.

Mr. LIVNEY. Well, this Senator described that a cull is definitely in many cases a good chicken and I would like to have it put on the record that is the only chicken that we eat, we farmers, so they are good chickens and knowing that among the Senators there are some people who know something about poultry, I hope they will take it into consideration that I don't know anything about legislation but I came here prompted by the two bills, namely, the bill S. 313 and the bill S. 1128.

And I felt that both of those bills do have a tremendous amount of good in them. I felt that a few words I would like to have heard that I want to state for the record.

First, that the distinguished Senator from Vermont, I am sure, is representing a great many poultry farmers, commonly referred to as the "old style-self-relying-stubborn Yankee type of farmers" stubbornly defending their right to run their own business the best way they know how, doing right by the consumer and always so as to offer their products at a fair price, as well as guaranteeing to the consumers the very best that they can possibly produce for the

consumers.

And second, I also wanted to state that I am sure that the_very distinguished Senator from Minnesota, Senator Humphrey, I am sure, is continuing to represent the many thousands of farmers who, like their fellow relatives in the State of Vermont, have equal pride in their profession of being the father of mass-produced agricultural commodities, the production of which, the production of these commodities being what has made the standard of living in America as outstanding as it is today. These farmers have shown again and again that their Senator is leading the fight on many issues of concern to farmers everywhere.

Now, what I wanted to state by that is that I do not say that these two Senators are in any way different, and that is why they created these bills, the bills as created, and the only thing which is in both bills is this fact that those two bills were, first of all, created practically the same time and they show equal concern on the part of both Senators to be helpful in solving one problem which I feel they have in common, namely, to legislate to the best of their ability, to legislate the kind of legislation which would remedy the cause of the disturbance, the fact that from time to time unwholesome poultry has been handled by food processors, as well as has been offered to the consuming public, and that they do feel it to be their duty to protect the American producer as well as the American consumer, as well as those who are engaged in being connected in one way or another, being instrumental in seeing the orderly transfer from the producer to the consumer, from one to the other, is perfected.

In Senator Humphrey's byword it is strongly emphasized that it were exceptions rather than the rule which he is concerned with, and I am sure the same intent can be found in the Aiken bill.

And again in the bywords in Senator Humphrey's bill, "glaring loopholes" are found in the bill of Senator Aiken which to a certain extent are to be found particularly in section 5 in the bill S. 313, line 11 and 12, and justifiably so, because this particular section is just ready made for exceptions to the rule, and those are the culprits as Senator Humphrey states in his paragraph starting with I mean, the exceptions are the culprits being discussed, it is not the rule, the rule is to give the very best poultry possible to the consumer-starting with "Three 1956 psittacosis ***"

However, I, as a representative of farmers, find a loophole, an equally deplorable one, in the last paragraph of Senator Humphrey's bill, and the main thing he states is that the inspection shall not be done on the farm. He says it in different words other than the legal form-and I have seen it in the Reader's Digest, too—and as against that, and I