He continues:

Also, based on our best knowledge at the moment, it appears that the minimal needs of the part G program will require a 3-year continuation, including 1956-57, but at about double the present appropriation level.

These are Oklahoma's needs under this program, and I urge this committee to give them most careful consideration. I sincerely hope that adequate funds can be provided to meet these needs, for we are proud of our past record, and desire to improve it in the years ahead. The health and welfare of our citizens will be directly affected by our results in this field.

Mr. FOGARTY. Thank you very much, Mr. Edmondson, for your usual excellent statement.

Mr. EDMONDSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for affording me this opportunity to appear before your committee.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

WITNESS

HON. MARTHA W. GRIFFITHS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. FOGARTY. We now have before the committee Congresswoman Martha W. Griffiths, who represents the 17th District of Michigan. Mrs. Griffiths, do you have a statement that you would like to make for the committee?

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, let me thank you for the opportunity to present my views on the need for adequate financial support for the Food and Drug Administration. It is not my purpose to delve into the fiscal complexities involved. I have confidence that with your experience and knowledge of the problem you will make wise recommendations to the House.

It is my purpose, however, to urge that the Food and Drug Administration be rescued from the stepchild role it has come to occupy in recent years.

Our citizens generally will tell you they have confidence that the Federal Government is protecting the purity of the foods and drugs they buy and use. But this confidence is not wholly sound as you know from your study of the Citizens Advisory Committee report on the Food and Drug Administration. Although given too little public circulation, this report was a dramatic summary of the shortcomings of Food and Drug Administration programs.

This was not an indictment of FDA personnel but rather a warning that the public health was in grave danger if adequate financial support was withheld. This vital public agency needs more trained scientists; must replace some of its 40-year-old equipment; must have more enforcement agents and attorneys; and must conduct an expanded program of public education.

Without recounting all the details of the citizens committee report, it came as a shock to learn that under present limitations the Food

and Drug Administration is only able to inspect food-processing plants once in 60 years; that it is only once in 3 years that inspectors are able to visit poultry processing plants; and that only 10 percent of the 100,000 plants using chemical additives in food are inspected each

year.

My own State of Michigan is a good example of the manner in which our public-health protection is being shortchanged because of a lack of staff and facilities.

There are but two enforcement agents stationed at Detroit. These men are responsible for nearly 10,000 plants and warehouses which come under jurisdiction of the Food and Drug laws.

There is no clerical help in this office and when these two men are in the field, the public is deprived of even having a phone call for information being answered.

These agents do have the assistance on a part-time basis of a member of the United States district attorney's office for the preparation of court cases.

When you consider the mass of work involved in preparing a case for court, the everpressing need for field inspections, and the need for record keeping, it is no understatement to say the people of Michigan have scant basis for the confidence they have in Federal protection of foods and drugs and cosmetics.

In addition to personnel there is need of a modern laboratory in Detroit so that suspected materials could be checked without long delay as is now the case.

Although the agency has not specifically requested funds for establishing a laboratory in Detroit, it is my hope the committee will give this matter serious consideration.

This situation in Detroit and Michigan is duplicated all over the country.

We are indeed fortunate that a major public-health catastrophe has not resulted because this agency lacks the resources necessary to do a proper job.

But perhaps the most serious statement contained in the committee's report was this:

The Food and Drug Administration now has insufficient funds, staff, and facilities to meet the essential responsibility of protecting the public health. It is my sincere hope that your committee recommends and the Congress approves funds so that that observation can never again be made. Mr. FOGARTY. I am sure you know, Mrs. Griffiths, that I have also been very interested in adequate appropriations for the Food and Drug Administration over the period of the last several years.

I join with you in hoping that this Congress adequately supports this important work. Thank you very much for appearing before the committee.

Mrs. GRIFFITHS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to present my

statement.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

WITNESS

HON. LEONOR K. SULLIVAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Mr. FOGARTY. We are happy to have Congresswoman Sullivan with us today. Mrs. Sullivan, I believe you also have a statement on the need for funds for Food and Drug activities.

Mrs. SULLIVAN. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.

I very much appreciate your courtesy in permitting me to bring to the attention of the subcommittee the urgent necessity for increased funds for the Food and Drug Administration for the administration of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and thus for the protection of the health of every American-every man, woman, and child in our country.

As the members of the subcommittee know, I have been seeking, ever since coming to Congress, to obtain more adequate funds for the Food and Drug Administration, an agncy of Government which I think in the last few years has been treated rather shabbily. Over a period of years from 1939 to 1951, there was a steady growth in the appropriations for this agency, and in fiscal 1952 and 1953, the appropriations for the Food and Drug Administration reached their highest level. Then an almost incredible thing happened.

Instead of maintaining this essential growth and expansion in the funds of the Food and Drug Administration to take into account the constantly expanding responsibilities of this agency in coping with the expanded use of frozen and processed foods and so many new drugs and cosmetics, we saw the funds of the Food and Drug Administration actually cut for 2 years in a row-first by $400,000 and then by $500,000, respectively, below the levels of 1952 and 1953.

I was among those who opposed those cuts. I think they were mistakes. Those cuts meant a 15 percent reduction in personnel, and also the curtailment of field travel by inspectors, and also a slowing down in the processing of complaints and prosecutions.

When I complained of these reductions in funds and urged an increase in appropriations for the Food and Drug Administration rather than the series of reductions in funds which took place in both the 1st and 2d sessions of the 83d Congress, I was informed that the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare thought there should be a comprehensive restudy of the work of the agency to see whether it was doing a good job or whether it was just intefering with and persecuting and annoying legitimate business. So we had the funds appropriated for a study by an advisory committee.

That advisory committee reported last year. It reported that the Food and Drug Administration did one of the most important jobs of any Government agency. It reported that in contrast to the action of the new administration in 1953 and 1954 in reducing funds by $400,000 and $500,000, respectively, below the levels of President Truman's budget recommendations for the Food and Drug Administration, we should begin immediately on a tremendous expansion of the work of this agency and of the funds for its work so that over a 5- to 10-year period there should be a 3- to 4-fold increase. This would mean a budget of from $16,800,000 to $22,400,000, rather than the

$5 million or so we had been appropriating for this agency under Mrs. Hobby.

The committee recommended an increase of from 10 to 20 percent in the first year of such an expansion program. Consequently, I introduced last July H. R. 7287 to do the following:

That in order to make possible on an efficient organizational basis an immediate start on a fourfold expansion of the personnel and facilities of the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare within a period of 5 to 10 years, as recommended by the Citizens Advisory Committee on the Food and Drug Administration, appointed by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, in a report to the Secretary dated June 30, 1955, an additional sum of $1,096,800 is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1956, to be used by that agency in employing additional inspectors, chemists, and other scientific experts, for a substantially enlarged educational and informational program, and otherwise to begin to put into effect the recommendations of the Citizens Advisory Committee on the Food and Drug Administration thus assisting the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to initiate steps necessary to overcome the present serious deficiency because of lack of funds in its ability to meet its essential responsibility of protecting the public health.

Unfortunately, even though the then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Mrs. Hobby, had before her this report from her own advisory committee on the urgent necessity of an immediate 10 to 20 percent increase in funds for the Food and Drug Administration to begin a 5- to 10-year program leading to a three-to-fourfold increase in funds of the agency, I could not get any support for my bill last year to carry through an immediate increase as recommended by the advisory committee. The Food and Drug Administration could have been engaged during this entire fiscal year in the expanded program recommended by the advisory committee. Instead it had to get along on less money than was provided under the Truman administration.

Now for the coming fiscal year, the administration is recommending an increase in funds of about $1 million for the Food and Drug Administration beginning next July 1. A whole year will have gone by, following the report of the advisory committee, before a single additional dollar will have been provided. I think this is tragic.

Of course I support the increase recommended in the President's budget for the Food and Drug Administration-it is almost the identical figure contained in the bill I introduced last year for an increase which could have been in effect now since last July. I would urge this subcommittee not only to accept the amount suggested by the President and his advisers which works out to about $1 million more for regular continuing operations; I would urge that you add much more to that amount. I cannot tell you exactly how much the Food and Drug Administration could use advantageously in this coming fiscal year; but I am sure that an $8 million figure would not be out of line. In other words, over and above the additional $1 million for regular continuing work of the agency as recommended by the President, I would suggest an additional $1,220,000 for a round figure of $8 million.

And I would urge that the committee provide that this additional money be used for a substantial strengthening of the inspection staff, as well as for a strengthening of the headquarters staff.

According to one of the top officials of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the additional $1 million recommended in the budget for the Food and Drug Administration will hardly do any more than bring the personnel up to the level of the agency's staff in 1952 under President Truman, before the new administration came in and began slashing the agency. And if this budget item is finally approved by Congress as recommended by the President we would still have only about 300 inspectors on the rolls 16 months from now-by June 30, 1957-in contrast to the 250 on the rolls at the present time and in contrast to the goal of 1,000 inspectors recommended by the Advisory Committee.

In analyzing, or in trying to analyze the breakdown submitted by the President on the "Detail of personal services" accompanying the budget, it struck me that most of the additional money for personal services for the Food and Drug Administration provided for in the President's budget seems to be for very low-paying jobs with just a very few additional persons provided for in the upper salary ranges. Thus, it would mean adding only 2 or 3 people above $10,000 a year, and only a handful in the grade 13 range which goes from $8,990 to $10,065. It seems to me also that a good number of the grade 12 jobs from $7,570 to $8,645 which are added under the new budget seem to be mostly upgrading of existing jobs rather than addition of new jobs in this vital field of inspector and food and drug officer in the field. I would like to see far more people added in the upper grades applying to food and drug inspectors and officers than in the GS-3, GS-4, GS-5, and GS-7 grades where so much of the additional personnel apparently will be added under this increased amount recommended by the President. I am sure the Food and Drug Administration can train these experts and get them into the field where they are needed if you will just provide the funds.

In conclusion I would like to say that I appreciate the interest of this subcommittee in the very important area of food and drug inspection. I know that if the Administration were to ask for more adequate funds, you would give such a request your sympathetic consideration. I know that you are reluctant to recommend more money for any Government agency than the amount the President asks for. I nevertheless feel I must in this case ask you to do just that—that is, provide not only the additional $1 million or so recommended by the President in the funds of the Food and Drug Administration but an additional $1,220,000 beyond that to make the total for salaries and expenses of the Food and Drug Administration $8 million rather than $6,779,000.

We already know that the inspectors can only get around to about 11,000 establishments a year out of the 96,000 or so which should be covered. Even under the proposed budget of $6,779,000 they could inspect only about 13,800 establishments. I don't think that is good enough.

I am pleased that even if it took it a year to do so, the Administration has finally come around to asking for an increase of Food and Drug Administration funds of $1 million over the amount appropriated last year. But a whole year has gone by. The needs are greater. The Food and Drug Administration has had this entire year to work out a plan for expanding its facilities and its work as recommended by the