cure in 15 to 20 days. But they have not succeeded in discovering the method by which they can satisfactorily cure these produets in such a short time. They want to be able to put on a very mild cure and have it go to the consumer promptly; and then you get the delicate flavor.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Doctor, when I was a boy on the farm we used to buy a large box of bacon [that tall, 3 feet] and we ate one box and got down to the bottom and found four mule feet in there. Evidently we had been eating mule meat. Is that possible now? Doctor MOHLER. No, sir; it is not, unless you get it from some local uninspected slaughter house that kills mules.

Mr. BUCHANAN. I understand. I mean from these big packing houses? Doctor MOHLER. No, sir; absolutely not.

FOR ERADICATION OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.

Mr. Chairman, the last item I have here is just a small item on foot-and-mouth disease.

Mr. ANDERSON. Is that miscellaneous?

Doctor MOULER. Yes, sir: page 332. I just wish to say that we are continui g to make these investigations of wildcat reports. We are spending about $3,500 a month to investigate these various reports of foot and mouth disease, and also to make inspections at some of the principal stockyards.

Mr. ANDERSON. How much is there still remaining of this ori inal fund?

Doctor MOHLER. We still have $300,532 of the original fund unexpended. This last year we spent $45,993.

Mr. ANDERSON. Do you get a good many r ports of supposed or alleged foot and mouth disease?

Doctor MOHLER. Yes, sir: we got on last eek dow n the 'mperial Valley, Calif., and it seemed like a very good lead, because the man who reported it is Doctor Loeffler, one of our former men, a very intelligent fellow. It was from right along the Mexican border, where we know there may be things we do ot always hear about promptly. I wired the State veterinarian at He sent his repres tative from Sacramento and we sent an inspe or from Los Angeles. They got there together and concurred in the opinion that it was not footand-mouth disease. This is the most recent report.

nce.

At the present time when foot-and-mouth disease is unusually prevalent in many countries with which we are trading, extra precautions are being taken to de ect the disease promptly in the event it should be introduced into this country. Our expenditures under this project are cheap insurance when it is realized that England has paid in compensation as indemnity for animals slaughtered in the last four months approximately $5,000,000 in combating an outbreak of this disease.

Mr. ANDERSON. Is any work done under this appropriation in foreign countries?

Doctor MOHLER. No, sir; none at all.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1924.

STATEMENT OF MR. C. W. LARSON, CHIEF DAIRY DIVISION, BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY.

FOR INVESTIGATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS IN THE DAIRY INDUSTRY.

Mr. ANDERSON. We will take up this morning the item on page 59, for necessary expenses for investigations and experiments in the dairy industry.

Mr. LARSON. That appropriation is practically the same as before, showing an apparent increase of $450, but included in the appropriation now is $5,320 for the increased salaries under the reclassification act, $6,280 for the bonus, making an actual decrease for the regular work of $11,150.

Mr. ANDERSON. Tell us something about the projects under this item.

Mr. LARSON. The work under this item is divided under five main heads--the laboratory investigations on milk and milk products, milk sanitation, efficiency in milk-plant management, breeding and nutrition of dairy cows, the practical application of the results of these researches, and the conduct of experimental farms.

Mr. ANDERSON. How many of these experimental farms have you now?

Mr. LARSON. There are five dairy farms.

Mr. ANDERSON. Where are they?

Mr. LARSON. There is the largest farm at Beltsville, Md., and one in connection with the sugar cane and cotton farm in New Iberia; one at Woodward, Okla., and one in connection with the dry-land farm in Ardmore, S. Dak.; one at Huntley in connection with the dry lands that are under irrigation. That makes five. The work at the outlying stations is chiefly with local feeds and conditions, while the investigations in nutrition breeding and management work are conducted at Beltsville.

Mr. ANDERSON. As I understand these outlying stations, what you are trying to do is to establish a method of dairying on the basis of the crops that can be raised in the locality?

Mr. LARSON. But those farms, however, are not under these items. The one at Beltsville is under this item.

BELTSVILLE EXPERIMENT STATION.

Mr. ANDERSON. Tell us what you are doing out at Beltsville now. Mr. LARSON. At Beltsville we have three general lines of work, animal nutrition, animal breeding, and herd management. The farm provides facilities for making fundamental studies in milk production. All of the 190 acres, except the acres required for buildings and yards, are used for raising feed for the 180 head of

animals.

Mr. ANDERSON. Do you get enough feed off this land?

Mr. LARSON. No, sir.

Mr. ANDERSON. You have to buy some?

Mr. LARSON. Yes, sir. The raising of crops has been done at a profit. The farm also furnishes animals for the nutrition and breeding work, and in addition the feed and management studies to determine the food value of different materials, investigations to determine the best method of housing and handling dairy cows, etc.

RESULTS OF INVESTIGATIONS.

Mr. ANDERSON. What has come out of these investigations? Mr. LARSON. In the nutrition work in the past year we have shown the lack of certain organic salts in feeds and their effect upon production, showing that they limit production. We have also studied the differences in the proteins of feeds, and it has been found that the simple chemical analysis does not reveal the whole story of the food value in the various feeds. For instance, you could have two feeds, like bran and cottonseed meal. Up until recently it was supposed that they would be of equal value if they had the same amount of protein, but we have found there is a difference in the proteins, and that part of it is available for milk production and other parts are not. That is helping a good deal to increase efficiency in feeding.

Mr. ANDERSON. I imagine that affects somewhat the composition of your balanced ration?

Mr. LARSON. Even if it is balanced according to our present usage of balanced rations, it does not tell the whole story, because you may have two rations balanced exactly the same as far as our regular methods go and still not be equally valuable. For instance, the same quantity of protein in cottonseed meal is worth much more than the same quantity of protein in bran. That is because it contains certain elements that are more valuable in feeding dairy cows, because they stimulate production.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Do you look forward to a time arriving, in view of the fact that the animals remain the same by nature and everything else, when you will have an ideal feed and where you will not have to make any more investigations or spend any more money on these investigations?

Mr. LARSON. I can not conceive now, in my lifetime, when we can reach perfection in feeding. That is, we are constantly learning new feeds, new methods, and we are undertaking new methods this year in the matter of temperature. We do not know at the present time whether a cow will do better if we maintain the temperature at 60 or 70 or 80 or 40 degrees, and at the present time we are keeping animals under constant temperatures, at four different temperatures, in order to determine that.

Mr. BUCHANAN. And when that temperature is determined, of course you will have the proper kind of barns, with thermometers in them, to keep the cows in?

Mr. LARSON. Yes, sir. I think that is entirely possible. matter of ventilation enters into it somewhat.

The

Mr. BUCHANAN. Do you look forward to a time when, under all conditions, you will know what is an ideal treatment for a cow, even taking the temperature? It looks to me as if there might be some end to it.

There are so

Mr. LARSON. It looks like it but I do not see it yet. many problems involved, and it is so intricate, and we know so little about it that I can not see an end in a short time.

Mr. ANDERSON. I take it that it is like medicine.

Mr. LARSON. Exactly.

Mr. ANDERSON. You are constantly improving practice and finding out more about the action of drugs. We know infinitely more today than we did 50 years ago, with much more knowledge of exactly the same results that we got before.

Mr. BUCHANAN. But drugs and methods of feeding are two different things.

Mr. ANDERSON. After all they are not so different. Even in dietetics in connection with medicine we are constantly finding out more and more about how certain foods are digested, and when and under what conditions they should be taken, and how they tend to contribute to the deficiencies or excesses of good or bad juices in the system.

Mr. BUCHANAN. We had an ideal diet for the human system published here some time ago.

STUDY OF RELATION OF OUTWARD APPEARANCE OF ANIMALS TO PRODUCTION.

Mr. LARSON. We have also another line that we started this year, which I consider is very important, and that is the study of the relation of the outward appearance of an animal to production. There has been no material change in the method of selecting animals by appearance in the last 20 or 30 years, and we are attempting in a careful scientific way to tell whether the appearance of an animal has any relation to production. In this work during the past year we have measured 300 animals by outward measurements and then taken measurements and weights of the organs after the animals are slaughtered. We have the accurate measurements and the weights of the different organs of 300 dairy cows. Some very interesting information has come out of this work. We have found, for instance, that in animals of the same size and same outward appearance the intestines of one would be 50 per cent longer than the intestines of others. We have put a lot of weight on the size of the heart-girth in selecting animals, and although this work has not been completed, it indicates that there is probably no direct relation between the heart-girth of these animals and the size of the lungs and heart capacity.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You never read a book about an isolated island in the ocean, nobody knew where it was, and they had different kinds of animals there, but by applying various kinds of scientific measurements they even learned to talk a little bit?

Mr. LARSON. No, sir; I never did.

Mr. BUCHANAN. You have not read that?

Mr. LARSON. No, sir. But there is a great variation in dairy animals, and we do not know what all the differences are. The amount of production is the chief factor in dairy production.

Mr. ANDERSON. But what good is all this unless you can reduce it to a formula that the average farmer can apply?

Mr. LARSON. No good at all; but practically all the information that the farmer has now is based on these very investigations. Let me give you two elementary examples that occurred last week. Mr. ANDERSON. Make them very elementary, then.

DETERIORATION OF BUTTER FAT.

Mr. LARSON. All right. We worked in the laboratories on the deterioration of butter fat. There were some very scientific men engaged in those investigations, and while they know little about the dairy business they found how butter fat deteriorates and the cause of it. Now, of course, that is of no use to the farmer; but during the course of those studies they devised a new method of making butter which was never known before. They tried it out on a large scale in making butter for the Navy, and it was successful there. They made a product that will keep a long time. Three years ago one of the largest butter manufacturers in this country said, "Oh, that is baby play. That is no good in this industry." That same individual is starting five big factories in this country to-day to make that product.

Mr. ANDERSON. That is, to make the butter?

Mr. LARSON. Yes, sir. Within the past week a manager of the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association came to my office and said that was one of the greatest discoveries in the dairy field at the present time. He said, "We are going to make 50,000,000 pounds of that butter this year." He said, "I have just come from New York City here I have just succeeded in getting that class of butter listed on the New York market as a special class of butter." That shows the result of a scientific research and that we were successful in developing practical methods.

SWISS CHEESE.

Another thing our scientists have been working on for a number of years is an analysis of the eyes of Swiss cheese, to try to find out what causes the eyes in Swiss cheese. These men in our laboratories discovered how to put the organisms into milk that will produce those eyes. The largest manufacturer of cheese said he was not interested when that was worked out. But we made a product in this way in the factory at Grove City, which is under the direction of the department, and then went to two States and offered o give assistance in the manufacture of this product by the methods worked out by the dairy division.

During the past week the largest buyer of cheese in the United States came to my office and said that in making his product he had to have the cheese made in that way, because that was the finest cheese made in this country; and he bought practically the entire output of the territory where our men were working. And more than that, he has employed our man in charge of the work in the field to work for him, beginning the 1st of January. He has also approached our second man in charge. Of course, it is too bad to lose a man that way, but from the standpoint of industry the work is going on just the same, only somebody else is doing it. Now, there are two examples. The same is true in other lines.

MILK.

Now, in connection with this farm, it furnishes a laboratory for other studies--for instance, the work in marketing milk. It has been desired for a long time to study the causes of various flavors in milk,