The Federal inspectors are the ones that indeed shut them down. Ours was the only State put under Federal inspection. In the case of 49 other States and Puerto Rico, I would suspect since they have been under an equal-to agreement that the shutdowns of individual plants would not be readily available to USDA because it was short of an in-house, in-State type operation.

Mr. YEUTTER. That is correct.

Mr. ANDREWS. I would like to go a little further. The specific problem that we had was in a small town of 500 or 1,000 people where the local locker plant custom slaughtered in the back end for the farmer customer and in the front end was selling meat, not that he had slaughtered but meat that he would buy from some of the big packers that was federally inspected.

The original law without the Curtis amendment said he could not do this. Now the law is such that he can indeed offer the slaughtering service in the rear for his customers and he can run his meat market in the front. The difficulty in a small town was that he couldn't make enough off of either operation alone to stay in business. If he went out of business, you lost the service in that small town. Really the consumer was protected because in a town of 500 you know who goes to church and who does not. You know who is going around with the wrong person and who is not. You know who sells clean meat and who does not.

In a small town personal knowledge is the best way of enforcing sanitation. People just don't patronize a meat market for long if it has dirty meat, and every housewife knows whether the butcher is clean or whether he cleans his fingernails or not.

The amendment gave us relief and it is working out a lot better now. We still have some problems mainly along the line of the inspector who comes in says one thing and then 2 months later another inspector comes along and says something else. We have had the wholehearted cooperation of your people down here who have told their people out in the field once an inspector has given a lineup of what to do, somebody else is not going to come along and upgrade it or change the signals after the plant operator has made his investment in change. We have eliminated lots of the problems that formerly existed.

Mr. SCHERLE. Would my colleague yield?

We had a very interesting case that also involved my colleague from Missouri Mr. Hull and I. Our districts are contiguous. I have the lower part of Iowa and he has the high part of Missouri. There is a little town that borders the county, probably 2,500 people, and these people maintained a grocery store. The State of Iowa has one of the finest State meat inspection laws. I was in the legislature when we passed it and it has worked very well. The interesting thing here was that the party who lived in this small town in Iowa ran his business across the line 2 miles south of the Iowa border in Missouri. So he bought his meat from a Missouri packing company, which is federally inspected, from this store that sold it in Iowa. The owner of that store went down there and bought federally inspected meat and brought it back across the border into Iowa to sell it. The Federal meat inspector said, "No, you can not do that." They took the meat from him and burned all 26 pounds of it. Are you familiar with that? Mr. YEUTTER. Not with that specific case.

Mr. ANDREWS. That is not as bad as 2,600 pounds.

Mr. SCHERLE. For the little guy that might just as well have been 2,600 pounds of meat. We finally got the situation resolved. This is one of those typical things that happen where you have State and Federal meat inspection on a State border. The meat is inspected in a federally inspected plant, sold to a party who lives close by in another State. Even though the store is State inspected and had two inspections, the Federal man picked it up and burned it.

Mr. EVANS. No further questions.

Mr. YEUTTER. Mr. Andrews, I might add one followup comment on what you just said with respect to two inspectors telling a plant operator different things. This has occurred to some extent with State inspectors coming around in their effort to become equal to and telling a plant operator, "We are trying to get the State inspection system program approved, therefore you should do such and such in your plant." Then when the State has been declared as not being equal to, our inspectors come around in their survey of all of the plants, and it may well be that we will ask for something more stringent because the State has been declared not equal to. The plant owner says, "What has happened here? I just had a group of inspectors a month or 2 months ago telling me I had to do this, and now I have a new group of inspectors telling me I must do something else."

Mr. ANDREWS. One of our biggest problems has been with just this type of thing and some of the cases were ridiculous. One Federal inspector would come in and give the plant manager a list of what had to be done and it would amount to $5,000 or $6,000. Then the plant manager or owner sits down and has to decide, "Can I invest this amount of money and afford to stay in business?" But the whammy hits, when another guy comes along and changes the original signals after the operator has invested his $5,000 or $6,000. This is an unconscionable thing and one that does not make sense; we had a case in North Dakota where one Federal inspector came in and told the plant operator, "If you paint your doors with white enamel that is fine." He paints them and does the rest of the stuff that he has to do, and 2 months later they came in and said, "You have to rip out your doors and put in stainless steel doors." You have to use the rule of reason. You say that you have under Federal inspection at the present time only the State of North Dakota still?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. Plus these 14 States and Puerto Rico that are working on becoming equal to but have not quite?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. You have now 35 States that have achieved the equalto status?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. How many inspectors do you have in the field administering the Federal Meat Inspection Act?

Mr. YEUTTER. In round numbers, about 8,000.

Our current June 1971 ceiling for meat and poultry inspection is 8,264 full-time permanent and 726 temporary and part-time. Mr. ANDREWS. You are about filled up?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDREWS. How many was it 3 years ago before you began this Federal Meat Inspection Act? Do you want to supply that for the record?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir.

(The information follows:)

MEAT AND POULTRY INSPECTION EMPLOYMENT

On December 31. 1967, there was 6,251 in-plant inspectors out of total meat and poultry inspection employment of 7,443. On December 31, 1970, there were 7,296 in-plant inspectors out of total meat and poultry inspection employment of 8,723.

INSPECTION OF IMPORTED MEAT

Mr. ANDREWS. We have covered a lot about domestic meat inspection but I think of great concern to this committee and to our consumers is the inspection procedure that we use on imported meat. According to my figures there are about 1,100 certified plants within the 40 countries that are presently exporting meat to the United States. To inspect these plants, how many veterinarians do you have serving as foreign review officers?

Mr. YEUTTER. To inspect plants, none. To inspect the inspection services of those nations, there are now 14 and we anticipate increasing that to 22.

Mr. ANDREWS. Do you feel that this is adequate to do the job?

Mr. YEUTTER. That is a difficult question, Mr. Andrews, because of the necessity to define adequate. I would answer it "Yes," but likewise say that we could provide even stronger surveillance with more inspectors. To expand on that a little bit, we are going to place six more in foreign countries on a full-time basis.

We have cleared this through the State Department. In time that number probably should be increased. Having spent a couple of years in Latin America, as you know, I have some personal views on how rapidly that advancement should take place because there are diplomatic considerations involved that are very crucial. Since this is something new, I would like to move rather slowly on the number of people who are stationed in these countries. If it works out well, that number should probably be increased over time.

In addition, we feel that we get further surveillance by periodically visiting each of those foreign plants. I am not sure that that has been true in the past because our inspectors have been there perhaps once a year. In the future, with the changes in the program, we feel that they can be in each of those plants at least four times per year. That is probably adequate, Mr. Andrews, but I would rather have them there six times a year. We must also take into consideration the fact that the number of inspectors provided by the governments of each of these respective countries has gone up substantially and will undoubtedly do so in the future. Our surveillance is much improved.

Mr. ANDREWS. You have to depend then on the inspection system of the host country and really what your man is doing in their country is cooperating with them and seeing that their standards are kept up to applicable U.S. standards?

Mr. YEUTTER. Very definitely.

INSPECTION IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Mr. ANDREWS. I found in Australia and New Zealand this January that they have the same concern that our own meat packers have, concerning this changing of signals. You run one fellow in with one set of instructions and he comes out and you get another guy in for a period and he comes out. As a result, we have less protection really of our people's meat supply, because the foreign supplier throws up his hands and says, "What the heck, this on-again-off-again approach is something we can not get along with." In place of measuring up to the system they say the heck with it. Have you done something to correct that?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir. We have had many discussions with the Australian Government on this and their concerns are legitimate. This is one reason why we have moved to the program of stationing some inspectors permanently in these countries. Australia will have

two.

Mr. ANDREWS. New Zealand is going to have one?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes.

Mr. ANDREWS. I was talking to some of the officials of the New Zealand Government who were very uptight about the lack of consistency. This, rather than providing cleaner meat really, I think, negates the whole thing and we end with a poorer quality product.

Mr. YEUTTER. We feel now, Mr. Andrews, and I believe the Australian Government would confirm this, that the working relationships are vastly improved. Dr. Steinmetz, who now heads our Foreign Review Branch, recently spent about 3 weeks in Australia. Mr. Davies from the American Meat Institute visited there at approximately the same time to work with industry personnel. Both men also visited New Zealand. The reports that we have received since those trips, from the American Ambassador and from the Australian Government, have been excellent. We feel that we are on the way.

Mr. ANDREWS. Isn't it true that on several occasions impure and unwholesome meat products have come into the country for sale to American consumers through retail outlets?

Mr. YEUTTER. They have reached the ports of this country, Mr. Andrews. As you know, we have a port inspection procedure also.

VOLUME OF IMPORTS

Mr. ANDREWS. The point is, how many pounds of beef last year were imported into this country?

Mr. YEUTTER. About 1.8 billion pounds of meat and meat products were imported last year.

Mr. ANDREWS. Of this amount of meat coming in, how much did you inspect at port of entry?

Mr. YEUTTER. We inspect all of it, Mr. Andrews. This does not mean that we inspect each particular parcel, but we inspect each lot that enters the country.

Mr. ANDREWS. How many pounds of meat did you actually inspect? Mr. YEUTTER. I doubt that we could even provide that figure. Could we, Dr. Houston?

Mr. HOUSTON. I believe we could get that for you. (The information follows:)

59-584 0-71-pt. 3-54

POUNDS INSPECTED OF THE TOTAL OFFERED FOR IMPORTATION

Data are available on two categories of imports-fresh or frozen boneless manufacturing meat and canned products. Of the 928 million pounds of beef, veal, mutton, and lamb manufacturing meat offered for importation during calendar year 1970, 5,571,000 pounds were randomly selected and examined by import inspectors. Of the 393 million pounds of canned meat products offered for importation during calendar year 1970, 3,144,000 pounds were randomly selected and examined by import inspectors.

Mr. YEUTTER. We will be happy to furnish that for the record. This is a sampling procedure. We do not sample every individual parcel.

Mr. ANDREWS. From this amount that you sampled, you refused about 20 million pounds, which represents what percentage of what you sampled? Put that in the record.

Mr. HOUSTON. Total pounds rejected was the total lot. The sample was representative of the lot.

Mr. YEUTTER. It would be very difficult to calculate that but we will try.

(The information follows:)

PERCENTAGE OF POUNDS IMPORTED REFUSED ENTRY

In calendar year 1970, a total of 1,841,442,529 pounds of meat products was offered for importation into the United States. Of the pounds offered, 1,820,183,030 pounds were accepted and 1.18 percent (21,259,499 pounds) was refused entry.

INSPECTION PROCEDURES FOR IMPORTED MEAT

Mr. ANDREWS. What coordination do you have between the findings of your foreign inspectors and your domestic port of entry inspectors? Do you attempt to pass on the information that you get in the field to the people at the port of entry?

Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, always. At port of entry we are able to identify the lots that are rejected and then that information is communicated to or through the Foreign Programs Branch. All of these inspectors are a part of the same branch, so it is simply a matter of internal communications within that branch.

Mr. ANDREWS. This is a kind of a backward, after-the-fact-type coordination. What about the ahead-of-the-fact coordination when an inspector in Australia or New Zealand or some foreign country suspects a particular marketing organization or plant of having somewhat less than totally satisfactory procedures; does that individual alert the port inspectors in the continental United States to be particularly careful and perhaps take additional samples from the imported meats from that firm? Do you have this type of coordination? Mr. YEUTTER. Yes, sir. Permit me to expand, if you will. If that plant in the foreign country is declared to be a health hazard, then the notifications are sent through the system and the product is rejected. That is one case. In the case where the plant is unsatisfactory and perhaps is delisted but is not considered to be a health hazard, the knowledge would be passed through the system but this would not prevent the product from entering the United States. This means that more effective or closer surveillance may be provided when the product reaches this country. It would not be rejected per se as would a product coming from a plant that is declared a health hazard.