Mrs. NELSON. This is something I want to refer to again later. The third recommendation I would make is that the consumer is entitled to know the quality grade. Most of the food passes all the way through the distribution channels in this country clearly identi fied by quality grade until it gets to the consumer, when the quality grade is concealed.

I would say a very simple rule is if the food processor buys the product by grade let him tell the consumer what the grade is when he passes it on to the consumer.

In Chicago the Offices of the Illinois Consumer Federation are very close to the commodity exchange and I frequently take visitors there. It is marvelous to see all these buyers and sellers exchanging title to food commodities and there isn't a food in sight. They do it all by Government grade.

The commodity exchange couldn't exist without Government grading of the products because they buy and sell by specified grade-and by price per pound to two decimal places. I think that consumers should not be cut out of this system. If we buy without being able to see the product, and that is the privilege of the manufacturer, then I think he should have the obligation to declare on the label what the grade is. He certainly knows it.

Senator HART. I am told it would be helpful if all of us would speak right into the microphone.

Mrs. NELSON. Is one of these mikes more important than the other? Senator HART. That is a discussion I would prefer not to get involved in.

All are equally important.

Mrs. NELSON. I should have said are they both working.

All right, I will try harder now. Can you hear me?

Senator HART. I hope the response didn't indicate the degree to which we can be heard. Go ahead.

Mrs. NELSON. Another recommendation we have is that, since the label is the packer's invoice to the consumer-his declaration that identifies the product we cannot see, any pictorial representation of the ingredients on that label should be totally accurate. The picture is a part of his statement of what is in the package. Therefore the cereal package that depicts five raisins per spoonful and yields four per bowlful should be judged to be misbranded and removed from the market.

Senator HART. I worked on a cherry pie a few years ago.

We had this requirement in the bill for quite a while and it had to be abandoned in the interest of getting something. I am glad you emphasize again the desirability of accuracy of illustrations.

Mrs. NELSON. If we are going to have any right to the information necessary to buying our daily foods, then we cannot tolerate disregard of the truth about anything put on the label. All declarations about the the contents that go on the label should be true and accurate, including the picture.

My next recommendation is that the many, many packaged items which have been exempted from this law by the regulatory agencies should be put back into it. The Federal Trade Commission exempted a whole long list, including school supplies, hardware, sewing supplies.

I think it is deplorable that when we go to buy, we won't know whether the law applies to a given product or not. It should apply to packages, period.

This is particularly true of meat packages. I think the amendment we had to take to get the law passed-of excluding meat products-we should repeal. Meat products are one of the most important food items in our budget and it is absurd to exclude them from a packaging and labeling act. We just don't need to make this kind of concession to the Department of Agriculture and the meat industry any longer. [Applause.]

Now I think that Congress would agree

Senator HART. It just occurs to me that as a chairman I should frown at those outbursts. Isn't it funny, when that happens in a committee hearing room on the Hill, everybody gets in a flap and rushes 19 policemen around. Here it seems quite in order and I feel[Applause.]

Mrs. NELSON. Maybe that means you should hold hearings here more often.

Well, I hope that when the law is reviewed and improvements are made, the law will set an absolute limit on how long the delay of coming under the regulations can be.

How many times, how many years can the effective date of a regulation be extended? I think that 1 year is plenty of time. You announce the regulation in July of this year. For heaven's sake, by July of next year they should be ready to get with it. A year should be plenty of time.

There is one final thing that is more of a comment than a recommendation, but I can't omit it as far as the packagers are concerned. That is the whole enormous problem of litter and waste disposal. Who is going to pay for picking all these things up after they serve this very transitory role of carrying home a little bit of oatmeal or something? Who will pay for it? How are we going to get rid of it? I think the packager has to begin to take some responsibility for what he is doing to our environment and the added cost he is putting on the consumer in garbage disposal and pollution and things of

this sort.

I would hope that sometime the congressional committee would look at this from the point of view of our rapidly depleting natural resources and from the whole problem of waste disposal, which is getting so great in our crowded world.

Now a couple of comments about enforcement and I will have finished.

We have worked with the regulatory agencies that were identified by the act, and I have some strong feelings on this subject. Namely, that the regulations of the Department of Agriculture don't sufficiently meet the standard. In the consumer marketing world, a good regulation is one that enables the consumer to invoke the forces of competition. When we have to have a lot of regulators going around reading the records in the back office and the consumer can't participate by invoking the influences of competition, I would say this is not good regulation. We want regulation that will invoke price and quality competition and not stifle desirable innovation.

The regulations of the Department of Agriculture, as they have worked out over the years, particularly on meat products, just don't meet this standard. We had quite a flap last year about hot dogs. I think the hot dog is a beautiful illustration of how the consumer is prevented from making the forces of competition work, how the manufacturer who might want to put a better product on the market is inhibited, almost prevented from doing so. It illustrates the kind of regulation we want to get rid of.

Presently, as most of us know by now, the protein content in a hot dog in the last 10 or 15 years has declined about 35 percent, while the fat content has gone up at least that much. Consumers had no way of "voting their dollars" to stem this trend. They didn't know it was

occurring.

Now, suppose a manufacturer wants to increase the protein content of his product. What happens to him under the Department regulation? He would certainly have customers, if they could find his product. The means the frankfurther manufacturer has, today under the rules and regulations of the Department of Agriculture, to appeal to the consumer who is looking for a protein-rich weiner is to print on the package "all meat." That is all that the consumer has to go by. He finds a package that says "all meat." So he buys the all meat package. Now, what he isn't told: the Department regulations allow a product to be labeled all meat that averages about 12 percent protein. The dog food here has a statement of 19 percent protein on it.

If you would include even 3 percent nonfat skim milk, dry milk, obviously you would perceptively increase the protein content of the weiner. But if a sausage manufacturer should do that, and he is free under the Department of Agriculture regulations to do it, he would not be permitted to say "all meat" on the label. However, he can say all meat on the label and still put in 3.5 percent curing additives, 2 percent corn syrup, and 10 percent water, and still label it all meat. The meat that he puts in it can be over 30 percent fat. So I think that that kind of regulation-and this has been taken up with the Department of Agriculture and they don't seem to be interested in it-makes a mockery out of good informative labeling serving as stimulus to price and quality competition.

This on top of many other things that we witnessed with the Department of Agriculture over the years makes me suggest, therefore, that the Department has no unmatchable qualifications for regulating meat labeling. Maybe the one that it has is not much of a qualification; that is, a sensitivity to the interests of the meat producers. I think we should transfer the responsibility for labeling meat products out of the Department of Agriculture.

Now, as for Food and Drug, I worked with that agency through four different administrations, beginning with Eisenhower's, and they have always been understaffed. They have always been overwhelmed with their responsibilities for surveillance over the safety of foods and drugs, and whatever their reasons, they have consistently exhibited a great disinclination to exercise their authority over the economic aspects of food marketing.

Now, I think maybe they have a good reason, but I would like to just leave them with their safety and efficiency problems of foods, drugs, and cosmetics, because those are real problems. I think we should relieve the Food and Drug Administration today from a responsibility over the labeling of food and cosmetics. I think their recent failure to ask for a budget is final evidence that they don't really relish or tend to give this the kind of attention that it needs. To us consumers it is essentially that we have

Senator HART. That makes an assumption that may or may not be right. We don't really know whether they asked. They may have asked, but the Bureau of the Budget might have thought it too inflationary to give them anything.

Mrs. NELSON. True. All right. But the typical expression from Food and Drug, and I have a very high regard for-you know, I do work to help them get budget appropriations-but having talked to their representatives years over, asking what are you doing about short weight, how do you check these packages for weight, what about this label and so forth, the most succinct response I ever got which summarized the attitude was "Would you rather be cheated or poisoned?"

If they give you that alternative, of course there is only one answer. But I am unwilling to settle for that alternative. If that is all they can do for us, I suggest we look for another agency.

My final recommendation will come as a great surprise to many people, including a lot of consumers, but I recommend that we consolidate the making and enforcement of regulations under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act in the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Trade Commission already has a surveillance responsibility over many areas of labeling. The FTC relates to all business. It should be free of that temptation to come to look out for the industry they are designated to regulate. They have to relate to all industry. Properly staffed, the Federal Trade Commission, with a very strong mandate from Congress and a good law and adequate appropriation, could consolidate regulation-making and the enforcement of the Fair Labeling and Packaging Act. Consumers would have one focal point where we could work to make sure that we got good regulation and enforcement after the Congress did all the work in passing laws.

I thank you very much, Senator, for holding the hearings and for letting me go into this in such detail. We think it is very important.

Senator HART. We thank you, Mrs. Nelson. I do want to get into the record a summary that the Department of Commerce prepared which shows the dates of which certain quantity standards regulations were issued. This would bear on both your experience, your second experience in Sacramento, and Mrs. Grant's experience in New York.

It shows, in the case of some of these product lines it was well into 1969 before anything became effective.

(The summary follows:)

42-476 0-70-2