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More recently Carlson, in a study of some 250 children, 2 to 17 years of age, extending over a 2-year period, during which about half of the children studied were served margarine and about half butter, came to the conclusion that there was no perceptible difference in the blood characteristics of the children, nor in their growth and weight.

Summing up the results of the study Carlson says:

"Whether the greater part of the fat of the diet is derived from vegetable or animal sources has no effect on growth and health as shown by changes in height and weight and health records of children observed over a 2-year period.

"During a 2-year period the health of 267 children was uniformly good so far as serious illness is concerned, regardless of whether margarine or butter was the source of the greater part of the fat in the diet.

"If there is a growth factor present in butter which is not present in margarine, there is no evidence in the present study that such a factor plays any important part in the growth of children as determined by increases in height and weight. "Margarine is a source of table fat in growing children, as determined by a 2year study. Children readily accept margarine as a table spread when it is colored and served in pats (The Journal of the American Medical Association, February 7, 1948, vol. 136, pp. 388-391)."

The tax on margarine is not only a tax on that part of the population least able to bear it, but is a stumbling block to dietitians, including the United States Department of Agriculture, in their effort to improve the nation's diet. It is not the butterfat in milk that is its most important constituent, particularly since the butterfat can be replaced by margarine if reinforced with vitamin A, but the minerals in the milk, especially calcium. The Assistant Secretary of Agriculture told the House Agricultural Committee on October 6, 1947, that his Department would like to see the per capita consumption of milk, or its equivalent in milk products, increased to 1,014 pounds per year. The Department's moderate cost diet now allows only 653 pounds, the Department's low cost diet allows 546 pounds, while the city worker's family budget, set up by the United States Department of Labor, allows only 423 pounds. This, in all cases, is besides butter. The point is, if people were not discouraged from using margarine there would be more whole milk to go around.

With a fuller realization of the value of fluid milk, a shift from butter to margarine is slowly developing anyhow. Fifty years ago, at about the turn of the century, the consumption of butter ran around 201⁄2 pounds per person per year, now it is around 111⁄2 pounds. In 1901 the consumption of margarine amounted to about 11⁄2 pounds per person per year, now it is around 41⁄2 pounds. The tax is not only retarding the shift, but is imposing an unnecessary expense on the public in making it, not only to the extent of the tax, but, indirectly, through increased prices of milk and its products.

The price of milk in large consuming centers is tied to the price of butter, or is otherwise fixed through monopoly practices in accordance with what the market will bear. With the price of butter at a point only the high-income groups can reach, the price of milk and other milk products tends to be correspondingly high, monopoly practices or no monopoly practices. The tax thus feeds the high cost of living at a particular vulnerable spot.

To realize just what pegged prices for milk and milk products mean in the cost of living of the average city family, including workingmen's families, it is only necessary to bear in mind that, in 1946, the average city family of two persons had an income of about $2,000 a year, and the average city family of four persons had an income of about $3,000 a year. In March 1946, the cost of food alone, in the city worker's family budget of the United States Department of Labor, ran from $792 a year for a family of four in Cincinnati to $854 in Seattle. By June 1947 the Cincinnati cost jumped to $1,000, and the Seattle cost to $1,094. In September 1947, the low-cost diet of the United States Department of Agriculture cost $725 for a family of four and the moderate cost diet $1,011. The point is that, at current prices, milk and milk products absorb too large a share of the total amount available to low-income families for food. The United States Department of Agriculture allows the equivalent of 1,016 quarts a year for milk and its products for a family of four in its low-cost diet, and the equivalent of 1,196 quarts in its moderate cost diet. This is besides the amount allowed for butter, which could be taken out in the form of margarine. At 20 cents a quart, this means a milk bill of $203 a year for the low-cost families, and $239 for the moderate-cost families. This further means that if the lowcost families really used the amount of Milk the Department of Agriculture con

siders necessary, they would be spending 28 percent of their total food budget for milk and milk products, and the moderate-cost families, 24 percent.

This is altogether too much for essentially one item in a food budget. If the margarine tax no longer boosts the price of this item, because of the height already attained, it certainly helps to keep the price from falling.

Average weekly factory earnings in 1947 amounted to about $49 a week. This meant about $2,500 a year. The city worker's family budget of the United States Department of Labor, for all purposes including food, ran well over $3,000 a year for a family of four in June 1947. The difference between the income and the cost of the budget only shows how unfair the tax really is. It falls on those least able to pay it. The Department of Labor budget, in fact, allows only margarine in its diet, while the low-cost diet of the Department of Agriculture calls mainly for margarine, even if it allows a small amount of butter.

WRITTEN TESTIMONY SUBMITTED TO COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, UNITED STATES SENATE, PREPARED BY J. S. QUIST, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, IOWA CREAMERIES ASSOCIATION, INC.

This brief against passage of the Rivers bill, H. R. 2245, is submitted by J. S. Quist, executive secretary of the Iowa Creameries Association. Mr. Quist served with the extension service, Iowa State College, from 1918 to 1945, as a county agricultural agent, State 4-H Club staff member and State county agricultural agent at large. During this period he was active in emergency food production work during World Wars I and II. Since February 1946 he has been executive secretary of the Iowa Creameries Association.

This organization is composed of the local creameries of Iowa, both the cooperatives and those independently owned. The officers and directors of these creameries are nearly all farm dairy producers. The local creameries of Iowa in 1946 churned 170,138,485 pounds of the total 207,987,261 pounds of butter produced by creameries in Iowa. The local creameries serve as processing and marketing agencies for the milk and cream produced by about 160,000 Iowa farmers.

This petition to the Finance Committee of the United States Senate urging them to defer action on H. R. 2245 until the emotional reactions of the public has subsided and the impacts of such legislation is fully realized.

Only two aspects of the impact the passage of the Rivers bill will have will be listed in this statement.

I. Permitting the unrestricted sale of butter imitations will seriously affect the agricultural economy of the North Central States, and indirectly of the entire Nation.

The attached map gives the 1946 butter production for the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota. It will be noticed that 23 percent of all butter produced was in the first five States named and 57 percent in the latter seven States listed. Of all butter produced in the United States, 80 percent was made in these 12 States. On

Milk cows are a part of the farm business for most farms of this area. many farms the only enterprise is dairying.

Approximately 80 percent of all creamery butter made in Iowa is exported to the large consuming centers outside our State. Nearly 60 percent goes to the markets of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago; also large shipments are made to the west coast.

Aside from Chicago, the markets for Iowa's surplus dairy products are long distances from the places of production and processing. Of all dairy products, butter alone can be shipped long distances and stored efficiently so as to reach the far markets and be available for leveling off the seasonal production fluctuations.

Facts do not substantiate the recommendations that Midwest creameries should market milk and cream in dairy products other than butter. Many of Iowa's creameries are equipped to manufacture milk and cream into any product. Minnesota and Wisconsin are even better equipped.

The following table for the years 1946 and 1947 show how the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa have had to depend on butter in their dairy

marketing programs. The following information has been taken from the United States Department of Agriculture reports:

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Attention is called again to the diversion to butter production in these three States during a period of full employment, high wages, when creameries are equipped to market milk and cream in any form the market demands and when milk production on farms is on the decline.

II. Dairy cows are essential to good land-use practices.

Iowa's agriculture is adaptable to diversified farming. Iowa ranks fourth in total milk production on farms. Its milk production is largely from small herds. According to the Iowa crop reporting service, the 1942-46 January 1 average of dairy cows and heifers 2 years old kept for milk per 100 acres of land on farms, was far greater in 72 Iowa counties than the average numbers of feeder cattle on feed per 100 acres.

Iowa has become a great food-producing State because Iowa farmers know there must be crop rotation with non-raw-legume crops and pastures. The dairy cow has been a profitable utilizer of the roughages and pastures. Destroying the market for butter by allowing the unrestricted sale of buttter limitations will force Iowa farmers to farm programs that will be soil depleting.

This appears to the Senate Finance Committee for their most careful consideration to the Rivers bill before recommending it for passage, is not based on a selfish request for the protection of the Midwest agriculture. It is based on a request to protect proven methods of farming that are so necessary for keeping our lands fertile and productive.

Certainly Congress will not be consistent to appropriate vast sums for soil conservation work and at the same time pass legislation that will force the farmers of our most productive areas into methods of farming that will tear down the splendid work of the soil conservation program.

Consumers too must realize in their inspired clamor for cheap food that this in the long run may mean less food. The dairy cow and her products must be given due consideration in our agricultural and national economy.

THE IOWA HOLSTEIN BREEDERS' ASSOCIATION, INC.,

Senator EUGENE D. MILLIKIN,
Chairman, Senate Finance Committee,

Waterloo, Iowa, May 11, 1948.

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SENATOR MILLIKIN: The slam-bang, shallow consideration which the Senate proposes to give to the consideration of the oleomargarine question is very disheartening to the dairy industry. Such utter disregard for the welfare of a large, fundamental industry such as the dairy industry makes one wonder who is pulling the strings back of the scene.

I would like to call your attention to the following basic facts:

1. Dairy farming is synonymous with soil conservation farming and when something is done to curtail dairying, soil conservation suffers.

2. Butterfat, regardless of all theoretical analysis, is the basic keystone of the entire dairy industry.

3. Farmers will not object to the removal of taxes on the sale of oleomargarine, but they will protest forever permission for the use of butter's yellow color in any substitute product.

4. Do you know of any foreign country having any dairy industry of note that permits the manufacture of yellow oleomargarine? I believe that Denmark, as

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one example, has long permitted the manufacture of oleomargarine without taxes, but they have prohibited the coloring of it to resemble butter.

5. To permit the manufacture and sale of colored oleomargarine is merely to encourage fraud, misrepresentation, and trickery. It deprives the American

consumer of adequate protection from unscrupulous manufacturers.

6. Don't be fooled by the report that the soybean farmers are in favor of such legislation. The officers and directors of the American Soybean Association are, for the most part, processors or managers of processing plants primarily and many are not soybean growers at all.

7. I suspect that some New Deal officials are supporting this legislation, because the dairy industry refused to go along on the little-pig killing program propounded during the New Deal regime of the 1930's.

8. Remember that the dairy business in all its ramifications is more important to every section of the United States than any other business in our economy. I sincerely hope that you can stop the hysterical scramble to try to enact such legislation, and will do everything in your power until the Congress can "Stop, look, and listen" as to the dire consequences of such fundamental legislation. This is very important to the future of the entire agriculture industry and warrants very thorough investigation and study.

Yours very truly,

ERNEST M. WRIGHT, President.

MAY 12, 1948.

To the Members of the Senate Committee on Finance: We, the members of the Kentucky Margarine Consumers Committee, respectfully request that the following resolution be made a part of the testimony to be considered by the Senate Finance Committee when hearings are held on the margarine bill (H. R. 2245) on May 17 and May 18, 1948:

"RESOLUTION

"Whereas, margarine is a nutritious, low-cost food approved by health authorities and subject to the regulations of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, and

"Whereas, the present Federal excise taxes on colored and uncolored margarine, and retail and wholesale licenses, are discriminatory, unwise, and unfair, and "Whereas, the effect of these restrictions is to deny or make difficult the purchase of this needed food by housewives, and particularly low-income families, and "Whereas, these restrictions narrow the market for fats and oils produced by American farmers, and

"Whereas, these restrictions do not promote better national health, a sound farm economy, or encourage interstate commerce, and

"Whereas, these taxes and licenses cannot be justified as a revenue measure, as testimony by the United States Treasury Department has shown, and

"Whereas, these restrictions tend to keep prices high and contribute to inflation: "Resolved: That we, the members of the Kentucky Margarine Consumers Committee, urge the Senate Finance Committee to immediately approve the margarine bill (H. R. 2245) as drawn, so that it may be voted upon by the 80th session of the United States Senate."

GARNETT BALE,
Chairman.

MEMBERS OF THE KENTUCKY MARGARINE CONSUMERS COMMITTEE

Chairman: Mrs. Garnett Bale, Elizabethtown, Ky., president of the Kentucky League of Women Voters.

Co-Chairman: Mrs. F. J. Smythe, St. Matthews, Ky., member of the board,
Kentucky League of Women Voters.

Mrs. Rudy Vogt, president of the Louisville League of Women Voters.
Harry Petty, president of the Kentucky State Federation of Labor.

John E. Slaughter, Jr., vice president of the Girdler Corp.

R. H. Raibert, secretary of the Kentucky Retail Food Dealers Association.

Ralph Johnson, secretary of the Kentucky Wholesale Grocers Association.

Ruth Gilbert, secretary of the Kentucky Merchants Association and the Retail Grocers Association.

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