STATEMENT OF HON, ROBERT J. CORBETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. CORBETT. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to depart from my prepared statement and address myself to some of the questions that have come up here this morning.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Mr. CORBETT. I believe, sir, that some of the point of view which has been expressed during the hearings up to date is a little contrary to what I believe is the whole spirit behind the repeal of these particularly iniquitous taxes on margarine. Many of us over in the House who supported the repeal of these bills believe that there is simply no merit in the tax, no justification, that they are un-American, that margarine has no reason to come in here and plead for a right to compete in a free-enterprise system.

We feel very definitely that all of this conversation and all of this discussion regarding how this particular food product shall be permitted to be utilized in a free economy and by the American people is simply beside the point.

Taking the amendment which was just under discussion, there is being considered the possibility of permitting margarine to be utilized by the American people in a free, competitive market, when according to all of the American traditions, as I understand it, the quality of the product is the thing which labels it.

I notice all of the other quality products that are sold-they brand their product. They label it so that it is easily recognized, and then if someone tries to substitute or imitate, they are guilty of violating the copyright laws, and other regulations.

So we would like to point out that if there is to be any labeling done here or any marking, it ought to be in the traditional way, and we simply can see no reason why a product which has been proved to be nutritional and wholesome has got to be continually kept under shackles by some other product.

If that were established as the precedent in the American economic life, just imagine what might follow. We might have steel and aluminmum right now seeking repressive taxes against plastics and other possible substitutes. We might have the cotton industry operating in the same fashion against rayon or silk against nylon.

In other words, we see absolutely no merit in these taxes. We feel that the butter interests have enjoyed a special benefit for all of these years that ought to be removed, and the consuming public, sir, of this country is demanding that they be removed. We have, as was pointed out earlier, 40 million families, most of them in the lower-income brackets, that are being taxed in order to provide a specially reserved market for another American commodity, and that to us just seems entirely unfair and repugnant to the whole philosophy of our economic system.

Here we have the picture, if you please, of an American product consumed by the American people, having to come before the Congress of the United States and ask for the right to be used in a free situation. Therefore, rather than us in the consideration of this bill thinking about what new shackles shall be retained, how many of the old shackles shall be retained, we believe they ought all to be removed.

The Hill amendment, which was referred to earlier, whether it would be put in a triangular package, was in the estimation of the majority of the House simply a subterfuge to keep an increased cost burden on the industry which would be in turn paid by the consumer. The cost of retooling the whole industry to conform to the triangular shape just simply adds a new handicap, and if the thing that is desired is to prevent fraud, what is to prevent a product that is easily melted to be reshaped and sold.

And again we do not take much stock in this fraud argument, because with the 40 to 45 cent differential now we do not feel that taking the 10 cent tax off yellow margarine is going to turn the hotel and restaurant managers of the United States into crooks. There is certainly plenty of incentive to fraud now if that is the thing to be guarded against.

I would like to point out to your committee here that if we completely remove these taxes, as we think they should be, set the product into the American economic picture as it should be, that it would then be the duty or the privilege rather of the butter people if they feel they have a superior product to so label it, and just as any other food product of high merit is labeled.

Furthermore, and I think this fact that I recognize the shortage of time here, there is another fact that ought to be strongly emphasized in this whole situation, long ago, and used during the war as a standard, the home economics department of the Department of Agriculture recommended that the consumption of oil and fats per capita should be approximately 36 pounds per person per year.

At no time in the recent history of the United States has the per capita consumption of fats and oils ever reached that level. I am sorry that the Senator left. He raised the question about the total amount of butter and margarine produced last year. It happened to be about 2 to 1. There were 1,450,000,000 pounds of butter produced and approximately 750,000,000 pounds of margarine, of which 50,000,000 pounds was exported, so it was about 2 to 1. However, that whole total production was only in the neighborhood of about 18 pounds per capita; so that we were only about 50 percent of the recommended consumption, total consumption, that is, and we all know, we hear on the radio, we see it in the newspapers every day, we are urged to save fats and oils. We continue here as the Congress by law restrictions on the development of edible fats and oils. It seems to me that when we have not ever been able to reach a satisfactory minimum in this country, let alone in the world, that we just cannot justify a continued restriction.

Consequently, and the thing I would like to emphasize throughout that margarine, is not coming in here as some sort of a fraudulent criminal, pleading for some kind of a pardon, and to be allowed to operate in the economy under a parole; it has got altogether the same rights to the free market in America as butter or any other product, and there is no analogous situation in the whole law of the Federal Government where one American product has been taxed for the benefit of another.

I am sure that the gentlemen of this committee are probably as conscious of the public demand for a change in the law as I am, but as I have looked at the opinion polls, as I have gathered one of my own, as I frequently do, I find, for example, that the people in my

area are 82 percent in favor of the repeal of these laws; that the polls show overwhelming majorities that the vote of the membership of the House shows it, the attitude of the commentators and the commentators on the radio show that I would say the people of the United States are going to be rid of these laws. We talked about the State situation, which is a further example of public attitude. There were at the time this fight started some 23 States which had prohibitions on the manufacture and sale of margarine. Since these discussions have started, there are very few State legislatures in session. New Jersey has repealed the laws. Massachusetts' repealer is in conference now, and there is no indication that it will not be passed and signed. Maryland has eliminated it by judicial interpretation, and so we are down to the point when the Massachusetts law is signed, there will be 20 or 19 States still maintaining those prohibitions.

We are very confident that when most of the State legislatures meet next year that these prohibitions are going, because the public is insisting that it has a right to buy food as cheap as possible, and it has a right to buy healthful food and raise its children in the most healthful way possible without paying any tax to any section or any special industry.

I think this thing ought to be emphasized further, that in the House we had a very unprecedented circumstance, of course, when the Agriculture Committee over there closed the door on any margarine legislation for the year, refusing to consider any bills for the duration of the session, as of that day there were only 70 names on the discharge petition, and all of them from the one party. But in almost record time that discharge petition was filled up with the 218 signatures and some 10 or 12 other Members were standing in line waiting to sign. Despite the attitude of anyone in the House, the Members of the House in sufficient number went up and signed that discharge petition, and when the roll was called they voted to eliminate these taxes, lock, stock, and barrel.

And so, gentlemen, to conclude my remarks, I would simply like to state that on the part of the majority of the Members of the House, we think these taxes are un-American. We think they are unjust. We think that no one can defend them in any way, shape, or form. We think they are repugnant to our enterprise system, and that they ought to be repealed, both on the Federal and State levels, in the least possible time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Mr. CORBETT. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness is Dr. Carlson, of the University of Chicago.

STATEMENT OF ANTON J. CARLSON, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSIOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILL.

Dr. CARLSON. My name is Anton J. Carlson. I am professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, department of physiology and medicine.

Without attempting to set forth all of my qualifications, let me cover them briefly and mention particularly some of them which may be of interest to you in connection with the bill under consideration.

I received my graduate training at Stanford University in California, where I received my Ph. D. in physiology. After teaching at certain universities, I joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1904, spending the greater part of my time there in charge of the department of physiology and where for 10 years or so I had one of the 10 distinguished research professorships.

I am a member of medical and biological research organizations in this country too numerous to relate. They include societies devoted to nutrition and similar fields, as well as a much broader field. I am a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Institution of Nutrition, the American Medical Association, and so forth. In many of these I have held responsible positions. I have been the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Education, the oldest and largest organization embracing all of the sciences in the United States, and of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. I am a member of the medical and biological organizations, as a foreign member, in Argentina and France, China and Sweden.

In World War I, I served under the Surgeon General, coming out as a lieutenant colonel, and worked primarily on the problem of food and nutrition for the armed forces, and spent time in France in such activities. After the armistice I was drafted by the American Relief Administration under Mr. Hoover. I served with headquarters in Paris, serving and feeding, or attempting to feed, particularly the children in the war-devastated areas of Europe.

I have been a consultant to the United States Food and Drug Administration for 30-odd years, and am still a consultant for them. I have also been a consultant in connection with food and drugs for the Federal Trade Commission. I have been chairman of two committees of the National Academy of Sciences; I have been chairman of one of the committees of the United States Public Health Service; I was a member of the Public Advisory Committee of the United States Public Health Service. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

I am a member of two scientific and analytical committees, of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis.

I have published some 200 research reports in my field, as well as several books, one of them, The Machinery of the Body, having been purchased by the Government for our soldiers, that is, 30,000 copies. I have been a member of one of the committees of the Office of Scientific Research and Development dealing with the rehabilitation of our wounded soldiers.

Perhaps this recital of just some of my work in the past will indicate to you that I have and should have a real interest in the subject matter of the bill now being considered by this committee.

For many years I have been giving my personal attention to the value of oleomargarine as a food and to the laws dealing with the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine.

I want to state that, based upon scientific knowledge, together with considerations of human nutrition, there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for imposing these various taxes and license fees on oleomargarine as now found in the Federal oleomargarine laws.

While many years ago there was a lack of knowledge as to the nutritive aspects of margarine, and some doubts, today we have facts. We have facts based upon good and sound scientific experiments.

Anyone who wants to learn these facts in an unbiased way has ready access to them. Because of such facts, you will find unprejudiced scientific organizations and scientists writing and saying that margarine, as it is made and sold in this country today is a fine, wholesome, nutritious product; and, if you compare it with butter, margarine, and butter are nutritionally equivalent.

Just to mention a few outstanding scientific organizations, I could refer to the published statements of the American Medical Association, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, and the Committee of Public Health Relations of the New York Academy of Medicine. All these organizations attest to the nutritional value of margarine.

The United States Federal Security Agency, during the war years, in its attempt to popularize nutrition, understanding of nutrition, in other words, emphasized the need of seven basic food classes. It included butter and fortified margarine in the same group, attributing equal value to each.

Margarine is a fat food, its basic function being to furnish energy and to increase the palatability of foods. Like butter, it has a minimum of 80 percent fat, and the balance consists of skimmed milk, vitamin A, and other ingredients added to increase its efficiency and to meet the needs and desires of the consumers. It has been established, and no one informed would even dare to deny this, that margarine and butter are equal in caloric value and digestibility, which are the two major considerations for a fat food.

When you consider the fat soluble vitamins, vitamins A and D, fortified margarine regularly contains a minimum of 15,000 units of vitamin A per pound, while butter varies from a figure higher than this to a figure much lower than this, with an average throughout the year of 15,000 units per pound. Fortified margarine and butter, that is, unfortified butter, are essentially the same with respect to vitamin D values. When you consider other possible nutritive values, such as the unsaturated fatty acids, vitamin E, and the milk minerals and proteins, the two products are essentially the same. While margarine may have a slight edge in such respects, it is not significant nutritionally.

From time to time during the past several years we find that some worker here or there comes up with the claim that there is some factor in butter, of nutritional value, which is not present in margarine. The latest of these claims deal with a substance known as vaccenic acid. However these various claims have been clearly disproven by the work done by Dr. H. J. Deuel, Jr., and his coworkers at the school of medicine, University of Southern California, and by other very competent research people both in this country and abroad.

Dr. Deuel and his co-workers performed a series of very carefully prepared and controlled experiments seeking to ascertain whether any nutritive differences did exist between margarine and butter. Dr. Deuel's experiments were made on rats, and I may add here that about 80 percent of what we have learned about nutrition in food in the last 50 years has come principally and originally from experi

ments on rats.

I only wish I could take the time to explain to you each and every one of these experiments, since they cover the field so well and since, to a scientist at least, they are so authoritative. I have here, and am