ton more milk during the year. For every two eggs a hen laid in 1939, her descendant is laying about three eggs. Total egg and poultry production is up 113 percent.

We have 100 million cattle and horses on the same pastures and rangelands that in 1939 supported only $1 million head. We had a pig crop of 102 million in 1958 on the same farm plant that produced $7 million in 1939.

All told, we produced 58 percent more farm commodities last year on fewer acres than we had in 1939.

Now let us look to the future.

We're all aware of the present rapid increase in our population and the predictions that this trend will continue. The Bureau of the Census estimates that in another 30 years-by the year 2010-we may have 370 million people, more than twice the present population of our Nation.

This means that just to maintain our present dietary levels, we shall require twice as much food and other farm products as we're consuming today. New knowledge of nutritional requirements, especially of those in older and younger age groups, is emphasizing the need for protective foods-those important for needed proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Milk and meats, fruits and vegetables are important providers of these nutrients; but they are the foods that are costly to produce, process, store, and deliver. To insure that our people 50 years from now will be as well fed as they should be, farmers then will have to produce at least twice their present crop output and more than twice their present production of livestock products.

At the same time, the amount of farmland available is not likely to be increased much beyond the acreage farmers are using today. As our population increases, considerable of our present farm land will go into urban and other nonfarm uses. We can expect that tomor row's farmers--with only a little more land and considerably less manpower will have to produce for a rapidly increasing population, whose needs and desires will influence, more and more, the kinds and qualities of products produced.

Measuring from a 1956 acreage base, to meet the needs of our people by 1975, will require the equivalent production from an additional 208 million acres at 1956 yields per acre. It is expected that we may increase our cropland by 25 million acres between 1956 and 1975. Putting what is now known in research into practice, that is, converting basic information into applied results, will increase production in 1975 enough to be equivalent to 160 million acres at 1956 yields. The remaining 23 million acres required can be achieved by new findings in research. The improvements which farmers must adopt between 1956 and 1975 must be 1.3 times as great as those made for the period of equal length between 1935-39 and 1956.

And as the previous part of the statement shows, Mr. Chairman, that was a period of remarkable growth in the productivity of American agriculture.

Now let us look ahead at the year 2010.

We must improve agriculture enough between 1975 and 2010 to be equivalent to the production from an additional 417 million acres at 1956 yields per acre. This is 1.6 times the annual rate of progress made between 1935-39 and 1956. To get this done, farmers will have to do

a better job of conserving soils and using available water supplies. They will need higher yielding strains of crops and livestock with specific qualities to meet special market demands: lean, tender beef, for example; milk with more solids and less fat; eggs that retain their initial high quality; fruits and vegetables more suitable for freezing and canning; field crops with qualities especially useful to industry. Farmers will need more effective methods of controlling diseases, insects, and weeds; better fertilizer práctices, machines, and other production tools.

CHEMICALS IN AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES

In the early years of American agriculture we got along fairly well with very few chemicals because operations were on a small scale and many of our major pests of today had not yet gained entrance into this country.

Today, a wide variety of chemicals is available for safe use in all phases of food production, processing, and marketing. They include chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and weed killers: antibiotics, antiseptics, and preservatives: feed additives, fumigants, fungicides-and many others. It is hard for any one not closely associated with farming today to realize how utterly dependent we are on chemicals.

These chemicals are as essential for efficient production of foods on the farm as are tractors, improved varieties of crops, and better breeds of livestock. They play as great a part in assuring consumers a continuing supply of nutritious and appetizing foods as do our modern methods of food processing and marketing.

Every discussion of pesticides inevitably raises the question of biological control. We are often asked why we do not employ more natural enemies to control insects instead of using chemicals. We are working on this, too, and have been for 75 years. In that time we have introduced about 400 species of friendly insects from all over the world. Of these about 100 species have become established, and some are doing an effective job. We feel that biological control holds much promise, but it would be a great mistake to assume that this is the answer to the residue problem.

We are aggressively pursuing studies designed to tell us more about the metabolism of new pesticides, to discover what happens to pesticide chemicals inside the animal body, and to show us how to identify chemical structure that is related to pesticidal activity.

SAFEGUARDING THE NATION'S FOOD SUPPLIES

The Department considers the adequacy and safety of the Nation's food as our first responsibility. This has been our principal guide in carrying out assignments from the Congress and in serving the people of this country over the past century.

Our research and regulatory programs on crops and the complementary ones of the State agencies have provided adequate supplies of much needed fruits, vegetables, and grain products of high physical quality and relatively free from imperfections caused by diseases and insects, rot and mold. These are important contributions to the health of the Nation.

Similarly, the research and regulatory programs on livestock and poultry have provided wholesome meat to our consumers. These pro

grams guard our people against many serious diseases which are transmissible from livestock and poultry to man. We are working in our laboratories to find controls and cures for these diseases.

The American housewife can buy meat and poultry with confidence. The Department's inspection stamps are her guides to safe and wholesome meat and poultry products.

Continuing research is vital for continuing food safety, but there are equally vital and more immediate and direct methods we can and do use in the Department of Agriculture to safeguard the food supply. These methods are employed in our various regulatory programs established to protect agriculture and the public from pests and diseases, both foreign and domestic, and to insure the safety and wholesomeness of meat and poultry.

For more than 50 years-since passage of the original Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act-the Federal Government has had responsibility for insuring that foods in interstate and foreign commerce are safe, pure, wholesome, and produced under sanitary conditions, and that all such products are honestly and informatively labeled and properly packaged.

Effective enforcement of these laws has resulted in the soundly based confidence that consumers have in the foods they buy.

The Department of Agriculture, the State Agricultural Experiment Stations, and industry research cooperate to develop methods for the safe use of chemicals by farmers and the food industry. Educational programs of the Department and the State Extension Services, geared to this research, provide field guidance to farmers and others in the safe use of carefully tested and approved chemicals.

TESTING PESTICIDES FOR SAFETY

The laws governing registration of pesticides are stringent. All applicants for registration must furnish research data to show the effectiveness and safety of the proposed uses of pesticides.

Toxicological tests involve acute toxicity studies on laboratory animals. The results détermine how the compound must be used in further experiments.

If the compound still looks promising, field tests are conducted to determine whether residues are left on food crops. At the same time, further animal studies are started to determine the biological effects on laboratory animals. Tests on larger animals may also be conducted. Skin absorption or irritation tests are made and test animals are observed constantly to determine any, biological changes that occur. These evaluations may run over a period of several years. Only a few of the hundreds of potential new farm chenicals studied every year are eventually approved for use. Among those that must be rejected as not meeting the exacting demands of safety in use are many that may do a superior job of killing ingots or disease organisms. The industrial development costs involved in making certain that a chemical is safe before it is put on the market are high. It is estimated that industry will spend $700,000 to $1.5 million in a 3- to 5-year period before the product reaches the market.

The Department of Agriculture carries responsibilities for both research and control activities affecting agriculture. In the develop

ment and testing of pesticide chemicals, the closest possible relationship is maintained between scientists engaged in research phases of the work and those responsible for pesticide regulatory decisions. The same is true in the field of animal disease research and meat and poultry inspection or other livestock regulatory programs.

Many phases of the Department's research and regulatory work directly or indirectly affect human health. This is especially true in such research areas as human nutrition, entomology, animal pathology, and food processing and marketing, and in the regulatory areas of meat and poultry inspection, crop, and livestock pest control, and pesticide regulation.

PRECLEARANCE OF FOODS AND THEIR COMPONENTS

In the passage of the original Meat Inspection and Food and Drug Acts, the Congress provided for the surveillance of all foods in interstate and foreign commerce.

In the case of meat, a comprehensive inspection system was estab-. lished with provisions for preclearance in the form of inspection of all carcasses, meats, and meat food products, including approval or rejection of chemicals and other additives. This is done under regulations issued by the Secretary of Agriculture as circumstances and the advance of knowledge require, to assure that the products marked "Inspected and Passed" are sound, healthful, wholesome, fit for human food, and truthfully labeled.

In regard to other foods, covered under the original Food and Drugs Act, authority was not given for preclearance, but broad authority was established for action against foods found in interstate or foreign commerce to be in any way adulterated or misbranded.

In recent years, the trend in the Congress has been toward more preclearance in order to serve two purposes:

(1) To give greater assurance of safety to the consumer; and (2) to give producers, processors, and distributors more precise guidelines for their operations in order to assure the safety of foods to

consumers.

Five congressional enactments are in point:

(a) The "new drugs" provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 provided for the preclearance of drugs not generally recognized among experts qualified by scientific training and experience as safe for use under the conditions recommended.

I notice, Mr. Chairman, that I omitted the certification provisions for coal tar dyes that should also have been included at that point. (b) The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1947 provided for USDA preexamination of economic poison labeling to insure safety and effectiveness in use.

(c) The Miller amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in 1954 provided more workable procedures for HEW preclearance of pesticide chemicals in or on raw agricultural commodities by authorizing the establishment of tolerances when needed-legal levels of such chemicals in these products. The directions for use on labels registered by USDA for pesticides are gaged to meet such tolerances in or on the raw agricultural commodities.

(d) The Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957 provided for extension of the meat inspection type of preclearance to poultry products by USDA.

(e) The Food Additives Amendment of 1958 to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act provided for preclearance of chemicals and other additives to foods not already covered under the meat and poultry inspection acts.

In each case the Congress provided the mechanism which permits the determination of safety of use and wholesomeness of the product to be made by persons qualified to exercise scientific and professional judgment. The legislative histories show the necessity for the exercise of such judgment to cope with the complexity of the problems and the rapidly advancing state of knowledge concerning them.

MEAT AND POULTRY INSPECTION SERVICES

Under the Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act, broad authority is given the Department of Agriculture for inspection of fresh meat and poultry, and processed meat and poultry products to assure that they are wholesome, free from disease and adulteration, and accurately labeled. This inspection applies to all operations in plants that prepare meat or poultry products for interstate or foreign commerce, with limited specified exemptions. It requires, first of all, Federal approval of the construction, equipment, processing procedures, and sanitation of each plant. The inspection begins with live animals or birds in holding pens or receiving rooms. It extends through all phases of plant operations to the final product. This is a continuous inspection beginning with every animal or bird being examined before and during the slaughter process.

All formulas used for prepared meat and poultry products at official plants must have prior approval by this Department. Cereals, dried milk, spices, fats, water, curing materials, chemical additives, colors, and all other ingredients in such products must meet specific standards of safety and quality, and must be used only within approved limits. Rigid controls are maintained also to insure adequate cooking, cooling, and storage facilities required to produce safe, highquality meat and poultry products.

Labels to be applied to containers or packages of processed meat or poultry products must also be approved before use at official plants. Standards for meat products are developed and enforced to assure the consumer that he is receiving the kind of product he is entitled to expect from the label.

The Department maintains special chemical and biological laboratories to furnish meat and poultry inspectors with the information they need in making decisions on the wholesomeness of these products. Meat and poultry inspectors remove from the channels of trade as unfit for hunian use more than a million pounds of meat and poultry products every working day.

The Federal meat and peultry inspection services are under the direction of veterinary medical personnel. The key determinations of wholesomeness of the product are made on the basis of a knowledge and understanding of the significance of physiological and pathological changes relating to injuries from disease, chemicals, insects, and