3 pound, and 41⁄2 pound multiples, the customer could be a more intelligent buyer. If customer good will and confidence is of adequate value to industry, this kind of policing would be done by industry itself. It is our position that industry, whatever the reason, has not adequately policed itself in the area of packaging and labeling, and that, therefore, the legislation introduced by you, Senator Hart, is justifiable and necessary.

Confusion from lack of standardization: Our check of a limited number of grocery items indicated considerable progress has been made in the direction of standardization of packages, cans, and boxes, but with variations frequent enough to constitute a hazard to any shopper. Among nine brands of canned peas, eight brands contained identical net weight of 1 pound, 1 ounce each. However, one brand on the shelves among the nine contained a net weight of 1 pound.

In the same store, five brands of shortening were packaged in uniform cans of 3 pounds each. On the other hand, one brand was packaged in cans of 2 pounds, 10 ounces each. That particular store displayed three brands of king crab. Two of the brands were packaged in 72 ounce cans, but the cans of the third brand were 1 ounce less in weight, namely, 611⁄2 ounces.

Among five brands of cake mix appearing together on one shelf was one brand in packages of 2 pounds, 4 ounces; three brands in packages of 2 pounds, and one brand in packages of 1 pound, 12 ounces.

Ten brands of white tuna fish were displayed together on the shelves of another store. Five brands were packed in 7-ounce cans and five brands in 612-ounce cans.

Obviously, these variations constitute a confusing and deceptive practice. They are a source of annoyance and unfair competition to those in industry who would establish and observe uniform practices of packaging and labeling.

We have the highest respect and admiration for the great majority of producers, manufacturers, canners, and packagers of consumer commodities. Their ingenuity and industry has contributed enormously to the health, longevity, and comfort of our people.

Our interest in the truth-in-packaging bill stems from two major concerns. First, we believe that the ethical manufacturers who constitute the great majority need the protection, guidance, coordination, and direction which will be afforded them by the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration if S. 387 is passed by the Congress. Secondly, our 500,000 members and the 17.5 million persons over age 65 need and deserve the protection from deceptive labeling and misleading promises and the assurance of established standards which are proposed in the truth-in-packaging bill.

May I, Senator Hart, tell of our appreciation for the privilege of giving you this evidence?

Senator HART. Dr. Andrus, thank you very much for expressing the concern and the views of the many whom you represent with respect to this bill. And Mr. Giddings, I know that you must have helped importantly in the development of it. Thank you.

Dr. ANDRUS. Thank you.

Senator HART. Are there any questions?

Mr. COHEN. I, too, would like to compliment you on a very, very excellent statement. However, I want to put myself in a position

I am not used to up here. I want to come to the defense of the tunafish industry. Three or four consumer witnesses have made references to the tunafish cans and the odd sizes they come in. We have received a rather lengthy telegram from the tunafish industry in California pointing out that one reason for this difference may be the kind of packs that are employed. In other words, some tuna as I understand is in a solid pack and some is in a looser pack, and I just mention this because I think probably the tunafish people have come in for an undue share of publicity during the course of these hearings.

Senator HART. Are there any questions? Mr. Chumbris?

Mr. CHUMBRIS. Dr. Andrus, it is good to see you again. You have been before us on several occasions. I just want to go back to that cents off because to me there is something that if the retailers in the United States are as honest as I believe them to be and until the record shows they are not, I am going to continue to believe that way, that there is one instance where you can do your organization a great service by permitting them to buy a product with the cents off. It would seem to me that perhaps you ought to make a survey among the members of your organization to find out if when they go to the grocery store and they see two cans of coffee by national makes, both saying $1.27 for 2 pounds, and one of them has a 10 cents off, and you buy for $1.17, that she, 65 years or whatever age she may be, is getting a 10 cent discount, or if you buy cake mix, two side by side at 37 cents apiece on the box, but one of them has a 4 cents off on its box and the 37 is marked out, and you can get it for 33 cents, then she will be able to determine whether she is being given the benefit of that cent off.

Dr. ANDRUS. However, that 10 cents off was printed not by the person who is selling but the manufacturer and it came to the shopowner in that fashion.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. I understand that, and the bill is trying to

Dr. ANDRUS. And I think you see on nearly every one of the instant coffees and the detergents this very same thing. So you wonder after all if the 10 cents off printed by the manufacturer isn't already taken care of in the cost.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. But that is an assumption that you should prove to yourself whether it is a fact or not a fact. In other wordsDr. ANDRUS. That is it.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. My point is this. Let's not proceed on a fallacy. Dr. ANDRUS. No, but we can say this, that it is very confusing and the whole thing that we are fearful of is the fact that our people are not being able intelligently to choose.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. Well, there is nothing difficult. You said you had no difficulty at all seeing that 10 cents off sign there. There was no difficulty. Then the only other problem you have is to convince yourself whether the retail has given you the full benefit of that 10 cents off or not. That is the only thing that you have to convince yourself of.

Now, if all the retailers in the United States, or let's say so many of them are abusing the cents-off promotion; that they are taking advantage of consumer; then the record should clearly show that. ate 10 cents off and the manufacturer puts it on wiler gives it to you, we should accept it. As a was evidence the other day with advertisements

where one manufacturer gave cents-off and the retailer advertised that he was adding to that cents-off, so let us say the manufacturer gave 7, the retailer gave another 4 cents, and you got 11 cents off.

Now, isn't that to the benefit of the consumer if it is done legitimately?

Dr. ANDRUS. I would say that would be a leader probably in a certain business and I think our people would be foolish not to take advantage of this second leader. But I would say in our thinking, and we see always the same thing, 10 cents off, you begin to wonder if that isn't a standardized price and lead making us feel that we are getting something cheaper when probably it is the standard price.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. I want to go to just one illustration to show you how astute housewives are. Now, there are shopping centers and there is one particular shopping center in Washington where there are three major retailers, Safeway, Giant, and I believe the other one is A. & P. And the housewives, and I know this to be a fact, will see advertised, for instance, beef will be the low price, at a price advantage that particular week at A. & P., for example. Chickens will be low at the Safeway. And some other product will be low at the Giant. They go to each of those shops and buy and, for instance, if they have a freezer they will buy maybe 20 chickens at one time and buy for, let us say, 29 cents a pound instead of the standard 39 that they would have to pay at the competing store. They buy the chickens there and move on to the next store to get the beef product, and move over to the next store to take advantage of the other products.

Now, shouldn't the retailer have that privilege if this were done on the cents-off products also.

Dr. ANDRUS. I would say he would have the privilege of giving just the best and having a leader, but I would say on a package like this where it says 10 cents off, I don't know frankly, I would suspect that wasn't a part in the deal, but when I look at that and, word of honor, I read all over this before I found up here how much it was, and even then 5 pounds and 334 ounces at $1.19, I still don't know whether it was cheaper than this other one.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. But that deals with another section of the bill, the point that you are raising.

Dr. ANDRUS. That is what I am talking about. I am talking about the confusion. When you talk about three chickens, we are talking about chickens. And we know a chicken from a chicken. We know whether it is a scrawny chicken or a good chicken or a poor chicken. But here we don't know. When we are doing it only on pricing, that ought to be down here.

Mr. CHUMBRIS. You know that product, you know if you buy Rinso you will buy it regularly, or if you buy Tide or Salvo, you will know because that is what you use on a regular basis.

I have no further questions.

Dr. ANDRUS. Well, I may be wrong. You know, old people are not Allahs, but I still feel I would be inclined to doubt that, at the same time wondering if I was losing a bargain. It is the confusion. Mr. CHUMBRIS. Here is something for the consumer.

Senator HART. Thank you again, Doctor, and it was good of you, Mr. Giddings, to be with us.

Following a recess for lunch, we will hear counsel for the National Association of Frozen Food Packers, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Dunning of Scott Paper.

We will recess until 2 p.m. and resume in this room.

(Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m. on the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Senator HART. The committee will be in order.

We will hear first from a witness who made a strong impression in one of our earlier hearings, and certainly we are delighted at his return, Mr. Harrison F. Dunning, President of the Scott Paper Co.

For the record, it was my impression when you were last here you were not the president. I can put the congratulations on or off the record. I would not want to hurt you with the stockholders. Mr. DUNNING. Thank you, sir.

Senator HART. Sir, you have given us a statement and you may read it in full, put it in the record or expand on it as you go along.

STATEMENT OF HARRISON F. DUNNING, PRESIDENT, SCOTT PAPER CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. DUNNING. All right.

Senator Hart, and members of the committee, my name is Harrison F. Dunning. I am president of the Scott Paper Co. and I am here at the specific request of this committee.

I appeared before this committee in December of 1961, and at that time expressed by pleasure at the privilege of giving my point of view on the subject matter before you. I am pleased to have another chance again today, although I must confess to a disappointment at the apparent lack of effect of all of the testimony offered previously by practicing businessmen.

If indeed the points of view of the businessmen were considered in this matter, then I can only conclude that collectively we were pretty poor salesmen and failed utterly to make our position understood. I say this because the bill as proposed has not been altered in any substantial way from the proposals that were under consideration at the time the initial hearings were held.

In my prepared statement of December 1961 I indicated my belief that the American housewife shopper is perhaps the smartest buyer in the land, that she is rarely deceived and practically never on the same product a second time, that she is indeed the best regulator of sound packaging and labeling practices. I still believe that to be the case. I am mindful of the committee's position, as expressed when I met with you before, that the intelligence of the shopper is not at issue in these proceedings. I agree with that, but if we conclude that the housewife is a smart shopper, then how can we also reach the conclusion that such extensive and detailed action by her Government is required for her protection!

My company's philosophy about the modern shopper was very clearly expressed in an advertisement entitled "The Original Com

which we recently ran in many major city newspapers and

in Life magazine, among others. I have been out of the country for the last 3 weeks and before leaving had intended to quote a number of sections from this advertisement because it so clearly indicates our position and our belief. Upon my return to the office on Monday of this week, I found that Senator Ribicoff, during his appearance before the committee, did quote from this advertisement and submitted the entire advertisement as part of the record to this committee. I think then that I can save your time and mine by eliminating my intended quotes.

However, since Senator Ribicoff used our material to reach a somewhat different conclusion than we reached, I would like at this time to reinforce just two short parts of this advertisement because I think they state our true belief. You undoubtedly remember that the advertisement pictured a young housewife and pointed out her reactions to shopping in a typical supermarket. With your permission I quote as follows:

At first the whole epic struggle seems no contest. On one side we have this frail creature. On the other side we have her surrounded by some 20,000 square feet of goods. In the background are the unseen masses of manufacturers trying to bewitch her into buying.

But when our girl starts down the aisle, her defenses are massive. Jungletrained, her bargain-hunter's senses razor-sharp for the sound of a dropping price. Our girl is the easy winner almost every time. She is accustomed to the merchandising circus.

As you now know, this advertisement goes on in detail as to how we believe a woman acts and reacts in a grocery store. Senator Ribicoff draws the conclusion that we take a position similar to that taken by this committee, and so we do with respect to one particular item: Cents off the label, but for quite different reasons. You will note that in our pledge to our customers that we will not indulge in that kind of activity on our regular established products, we did reserve the right to use such a merchandising procedure, following the initial introduction of a new product or when offering a vastly improved old product. We made this reservation because in such circumstances consumer sampling is a requisite to consumer knowledge of a product or product improvement and cents off the label is an effective instrument in encouraging shoppers to try a new or improved product at least once. She then makes her own judgment of its value for the purpose of future purchases.

But it is here that we have to take leave of Senator Ribicoff's position, because we reached the conclusion that we would no longer indulge in cents off the label, coupons, or unrelated premiums on our established product line for entirely different reasons than those which he imputes to us, and I would like to make this point crystal clear to this committee at this time.

The real reason why we disapprove of this kind of merchandising is not because we think the consumer is deceived by it, but because our experience and our research have convinced us that such merchandising tactics on an established brand do not lead to permanently increased sales but only alter temporarily the competitive division of the volume of business that already exists for that type of product.

With tremendous unused capacity in our industrial setup and with almost 5 million people unemployed, we feel that business should devote its advertising, promotion, and merchandising money to those