A statement which HEW Secretary Richardson made recently before a group of consumer advocates recently underscores this point. The Secretary was sincerely attempting to understand why consumers wanted to take the Food and Drug Administration away from HEW. He said that "after all, the President only has so much time, so many hours in a day." He was implying that we consumers had a better chance of reaching the President's ear through an HEW Secretary or the head of one of the four super-agencies proposed in the Administration's reform program.

I don't believe the thought ever occurred to him that we didn't feel it necessary to reach the President's ear in order to maximize safety in the products we use and consume. Safety is less a matter for political judgment, and more a question of standards which cannot be affected by daily pressures.

In comparison to the complex strategies necessary these days even for cabinet members to present their views to the President, the consumer has very simple and direct needs. The problem, therefore, is to assign responsibilities for standards and safety within an institutional frame where individual consumers have a chance to generate an effective response.

In truth, I suspect one of the major problems which has crept into our regulatory program system today is that the growing centralization of executive power is robbing the agencies which regulate and protect the public of the ability to make real decisions. When the White House or the Office of Management and Budget can and does override agency decisions, then the agency is primarily a transmission belt for decision in which it plays no real part.

While the White House staff will insist they are reviewing the facts in order to assure justice is done, the fact is that the decision is being made at a place that is growing rapidly remote from the American experience.

Only the most powerful have the ability to raise a decision to that level; and once it has been raised there, the number of views are reduced to one and the environment is very rarified.

It seems to me that while each advocate has the responsibility to pursue his or her client's interest to the maximum, the responsibility of the agency should be to assure every viewpoint has the chance to be heard; and the agency staff should be required to make decisions in that context.

An independent agency is one way we can begin to provide an institutional basis for the participation of consumers in public decision making. It would be a distortion of the truth to say that consumers are now represented in gov. ernmental processes which directly and substantively affect us all.

The agency proposed under S. 3419 is a step in that direction, but it is not enough. The Consumer Safety Agency as it is presently proposed will not be able to deal effectively with the food and drug problems we face today, let alone those of the next decade.

The problem is very simple, without the transfer of meat and poultry inspec tion programs from the USDA, the whole issue of food labeling standards cannot be effectively resolved; nor can the issue of removing DES from animal feed (and the human diet) be solved unless control of all drugs, animal or human, is placed under one jurisdiction. For example, authority over the standards for consumer safety of food products which contain meat is in the USDA, while standards for all other food products are in FDA. The responsibility should be combined.

In fact, without the development of an effective infrastructure of supporting programs and activities to make the CSA a true consumer service agency, it will be underpowered and probably unused.

By this I mean that, in addition to meat and poultry inspection, other agencies which should be transferred to CSA from the USDA include:

1. Consumer and Marketing Service, primarily to obtain the grading programs for food products, price setting functions on milk and various other activities such as authority to intervene on transportation rate cases;

2. Food and Nutrition Service, which includes all the programs to improve the delivery of nutrition and nutritional services to families and children;

3. The commodity analysis branch and other market analysis functions of Economic Research Service;

4. The Agriculture Research activities relating to consumer and food economics, the regional utilization laboratories, human nutrition and in pesticides;

5. In addition to transferring functions, new divisions paralleling in function the following USDA agencies should be created:

a. A statistical reporting service, to collect, analyze and report significant information on consumer activities and actions;

b. An extension service to provide useful and worthwhile information to consumers within an educational context;

c. A consumer library, to collect, catalog, and make available all information on consumers and their programs in the U.S. and the world.

These functions are essentially consumer activities, in that they focus on the problems and needs of all who are dependent on an effective distribution system to enjoy the bounty of a highly mechanized, labor intensive agriculture.

Yet they operate poorly, if at all, in the consumer interest. The reason is the execution of these programs must pass through an agriculture filter of several thicknesses. This filter manages to strain out almost all impulses to serve consumer needs.

The filter begins with the individuals who occupy policy and staff positions within the USDA, must first be acceptable to farm, or agricultural interests. Key agency personnel are usually appointed with the tacit approval of farm or agricultural interests.

Once these individuals occupy a strategic position, they feel little pressure to worry about consumer needs.

However, it is unlikely that the agricultural community will readily give up these activities for the simple reason that farm leaders generally know the programs make excellent hostages to use in trading for farm legislation or for farm appropriations.

What I have proposed here is neither new, nor radical. It follows, in form, the plea of a man named Isaac Newton, who served as the first Secretary of Agriculture in the Lincoln cabinet in 1862.

Commissioner (as he was called) Newton, in arguing for the USDA, wrote in the first yearbook of agriculture that the object of "a great national department of agriculture" should be to:

1. Collect and disseminate statistical and other useful information and data for the benefit of the nation;

2. Answer inquiries, and at the same time, stimulate inquiries, invite discussion and correspondence by farmers;

3. Test tools and other implements, seeds, cereal, and plants so that farmers may be informed of the results, and establish model farms to do this;

4. Analyze by means of chemical tests soil, grains, fruits, plants, and vegetables;

5. Establish university chairs of botany and entomology so that research may be done on eliminating pests that damage crops;

6. Establish an agriculture library.

By substituting consumers in those places where farmers appear or are implied, the words read much like a proposal for a great national agency serving consumers. Lincoln, in fact, called the USDA "the people's department." Commissioner Newton wrote that the U.S. "must always remain an agricultural nation *** it is the duty of the government to take all possible measures to secure to the agriculturists of America the fullest benefits of its ample resources."

He could not forsee the day when farmers would constitute about 4 percent of the nation's population. But I suspect that if he had, Commissioner Newton would be here today arguing for an expanded Consumer Safety Agency.

After all, he started an agency which succeeded in doing admirable what it started out to achieve: Produce enough to feed every man, woman, and child in the nation, regardless of the social cost.

We still have yet to learn how to feed everyone, however, and that obviously is a job for someone other than agriculture, and the USDA.

CONSUMER SAFETY ACT OF 1972

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1972

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EXECUTIVE REORGANIZATION

AND GOVERNMENT RESEARCH,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 3302, New Senate Office Building, Senator Fred R. Harris presiding. Present: Senator Harris.

Also present: Robert Wager, staff director and general counsel; Mark E. Greenwold, assistant general counsel; Gerry Simons, special counsel; and Pamela Gell, chief clerk.

Senator HARRIS. The hearing will come to order.

HEARINGS RESUMED

This is the second day of hearings on titles I and II of S. 3419, the Consumer Safety Act.

We will hear from three witnesses today and then the hearings will be recessed until May 2 and 3, at which time the committee will hear from Secretary Richardson and from representatives of DBS.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. J. Edward Day of the Sidley & Austin law firm, special counsel for consumer electronics group of the Electronic Industries Association.

Mr. Day, we are glad you are here and pleased to hear from you at this time.

TESTIMONY OF J. EDWARD DAY, ESQ., PARTNER, SIDLEY & AUSTIN LAW FIRM, SPECIAL COUNSEL, CONSUMER ELECTRONICS GROUP, ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION

Mr. DAY. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chairman, this will be a somewhat different part of the subject this morning than was covered yesterday.

I am special counsel for the consumer electronics group of the Electronic Industries Association and I appear here representing manufacturers of consumer electronic products consisting of television, radios, phonographs, and tape equipment.

We favor a Federal Government presence in developing and enforcing product safety standards.

Development and improvement of safety standards has been a continuing top priority concern of the individual companies in our industry and by our consumer electronics group. We feel that even one pre

ventable injury from a consumer product is one too many. Therefore, to the extent that Federal participation in this area can make safety standards even more effective, we favor such participation.

We have, however, a number of important objections to the bill before you. I realized that this subcommittee is principally concerned with the organizational, coverage and administrative aspects of the bill. Therefore, I will concentrate my comments on just a few important points having to do with the Government organization and admininistrative feasibility aspects. Our general objections, which we have explained in details at previous hearings, are available in the reports of those hearings.

Our first point has to do with the specific reference to electronic products in the first subsection of the first section of the bill on definitions. This subsection (1) of section 101 follows:

I will not read but it refers to consumer products as including electronic products and specifically mentions electronic products in that first paragraph of the definition.

Then in paragraph (4) of the definition section there has been picked up from the language of the Radiation Act a definition of electronic product, and in section 5 there is a definition also picked up from the Radiation Act of electronic product radiation.

Senator HARRIS. Without objection, we will put those in the record at this point.

(The information follows:)

(1) "Consumer product" means a product produced or distributed for sale to an individual for his personal use, consumption, or enjoyment in or around a household or residence, a school, in recreation, or otherwise, and an electronic product as defined in paragraph (3) [should be (4)] of this section.

Paragraph (4) of Section 101 is as follows:

(4) "Electronic product" means (A) any manufactured or assembled product which, when in operation, (i) contains or acts as part of an electronic circuit and (ii) emits (or in the absence of effective shielding or other controls would emit) electronic product radiation, or (B) any manufactured or assembled article which is intended for use as a component, part, or accessory of a product described in clause (A) and which when in operation emits (or in the absence of effective shielding or other controls would emit) such radiation. "Electronic product radiation" is then defined in paragraph (5).

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS

Mr. DAY. This reference to electronic products in the definition section was not in the original form of S. 983, as drafted by the National Commission on Product Safety, and on which Senate Commerce Committee hearings were held. It was not in committee print No. 1 of S. 983, as released by the Senate Commerce Committee last fall. The inclusion of electronic products in the definition appeared for the first time in committee print No. 2 of the Senate Commerce Committee. We feel that this singling out in the bill of electronic products as the only specific type of product pinpointed in the general definition section, would carry for the public a strong implication that there is something particularly suspect or dangerous about our products. It tends to highlight us and to make it seem that we are, in some way, the particular bad boys of the product safety problem. The fact is that just the opposite is true. We cooperated with the National Commission on Product Safety when it was in existence and we feel that