Secretary BRANNAN. Yes; and there are a few other so-called exotics such as pepper and spices, cocoa, and so forth.

Senator BRICKER. Mr. Secretary, what is the food value of coffee? Secretary BRANNAN. I did not bring the right technician over for that, Senator.

Senator DOUGLAS. It is zero-zero-zero.

Senator CAPEHART. There is no food value in coffee.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions?
Senator SCHOEPPEL. Mr. Chairman-

Senator MOODY. I did not get that answer on meat, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary BRANNAN. I have it right here.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. I would like to clarify one other matter in my mind, at least, on this subsidy business. In all fairness I want to say I do not agree with subsidies being tied into this defense picture. I want to say when we go afield on that thing we are going to get into trouble. I am asking you, as a practical proposition, whether despite what this bill says about subsidies, you would be willing to limit all subsidies to only those products which are directly necessary to the national defense and the military effort.

Secretary BRANNAN. I think anybody can accept that. If meat and dairy products are not essential to the defense effort, then I do not know what is. I do not know. The Army told us at one time that watermelons was a morale crop. I certainly think coffee would be essential to the effort.

Senator CAPEHART. They did not make you believe it, though, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary BRANNAN. No; but they made it stick.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. I am talking now in terms of what I call morally approaching this thing-not trying to get around something by way of a circuitous route. That is the thing people are afraid of, Mr. Secretary, and that is the reason why we are wondering about these subsidies, how far are they going to go; whether it is going to be applied to Argentine beef, Mexican beef, and a lot of those things. I want to be forthright about it. If it is not in the category of consideration that is one thing. If it is I want to know about it.

Secretary BRANNAN. Actually, Senator, all you have to do is look at the record. We can only import Argentine or Mexican beef in canned form because of the restrictions under the quarantine limitations under an entirely different set of laws. Now, we have not imported those commodities and, therefore, if this law regarding subsidies were passed tomorrow you could not import those commodities. Therefore, it does not seem to me it has any bearing, really, on the subject here. That is the first point.

The second point is that the price of meat in this country is such that the importation of meat, if it were allowed by all the other laws, would come in here without having any subsidy at all paid on it. It would come in here at very attractive prices and help level off the prices in this country, probably.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Is that contemplated?

Secretary BRANNAN. It cannot be contemplated unless you assume that we are going to break the law.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. When I say "is it contemplated" is it contemplated that there will be a request for a change in those laws?

Secretary BRANNAN. I do not know who would make the request and I certainly do not think anyone would seriously consider it. Senator BRICKER. You could use that meat for the services abroad, for the Army?

Secretary BRANNAN. I understand they do.

Senator ROBERTSON. What is the sanitary regulation, what law is

that?

Secretary BRANNAN. It is in some of our import sanitation laws. It is part of the Tariff Act.

Senator ROBERTSON. That is what I thought.

Senator BRICKER. It was brought about because of hoof-and-mouth disease.

Secretary BRANNAN. Yes.

Senator BENTON. Do you approve of this law? You said no one would make a request for changing it. If there ever was a time for trying to get it changed now is the time. Do you feel the Department of Agriculture has a vested interest in the present Argentine law and would you oppose changing it or appealing it?

Secretary BRANNAN. Senator Benton, I was in the Argentine just after-well, in December of this year, and I saw some of the most beautiful animals you ever wanted to lay your eyes on tied up close to a tree or to a hitching post with their mouths running and their feet sore. Aftosa is widespread in the country and the risk of bringing it

Senator BENTON. My friends tell me the best steaks in the world are from the Argentine. I have never been there. But that was not the question.

Secretary BRANNAN. It is not true, according to my taste.
Senator BENTON. The best and the cheapest.

Secretary BRANNAN. The cheapest, yes; but remember, most of the steaks you get outside of the very heart of Buenos Aires is meat that was killed that morning, and if it isn't eaten it will be thrown away that evening, and I personally had difficulty in adapting myself to it, even though it was very attractive in price.

Senator DOUGLAS. This is off the record.

(Further discussion off the record.)

Senator DOUGLAS. If you eat the meat it will contaminate them? Secretary BRANNAN. Department scientists say it will stay in the

meat and affect other cattle.

Senator DOUGLAS. That would not affect the export of meat.

Secretary BRANNAN. I am not talking about the export from the Argentine. I am talking about the import of meat into the United States.

Senator DOUGLAS. Meat is exported from the Argentine and it probably comes into the United States. Are the British people contaminated by eating Argentinian beef?

Senator ROBERTSON. The cattle are.

Secretary BRANNAN. You missed the point, Senator. The point is the infection or the protection of the American cattle industry, not the protection of human beings, because apparently

Senator DOUGLAS. I am not speaking of importing cattle on the hoof. I am speaking of importing Argentine beef after it has been slaughtered. Is there any real reason why that should be subjected to the penalties to which it now is subjected?

Secretary BRANNAN. Our scientists, and I do not think there is any disagreement between animal husbandry or livestock men anywhere in the country, tell us that the infection can be carried on the carcass. Senator DOUGLAS. On the carcass?

Secretary BRANNAN. On the carcass.

Senator DOUGLAS. And will affect the consumer?

Secretary BRANNAN. No, no; it will affect our animals.

Senator DOUGLAS. Well, once the slaughtering is done in the Argentine how will the live American cattle who will never meet the Argentine beefsteak be contaminated by the Argentine meat?

Secretary BRANNAN. Through garbage, through any of the trimming being left

Senator DOUGLAS. You mean, if we eat the beefsteaks and then throw the rind out that the cattle may somehow eat the garbage and that this will poison them?

Secretary BRANNAN. Senator, we ought to have the technicians up here, but it is entirely clear

Senator DOUGLAS. It sounds crazy to me.

Secretary BRANNAN. It seems to me you should have no difficulty understanding that when half of a beef animal would be landed in New York

Senator DOUGLAS. Killed.

Secretary BRANNAN. Argentinian beef—

Senator DOUGLAS. Killed.

Secretary BRANNAN. I do not understand that word.

Senator DOUGLAS. Killed, dead.

Secretary BRANNAN. If there is the half of carcass it would be.

Senator ROBERTSON. Mr. Secretary, is it not a fact that they took the hoof-and-mouth disease into the British Isles through the carcasses of Argentine beef and not a live steer from the Argentine ever went in there, but they got the hoof-and-mouth disease all over the British Isles that way?

Secretary BRANNAN. They have it all over Europe.

Senator DOUGLAS. You mean the British cattle industry has been destroyed by the fact that the British people have eaten Argentine beef, that it has contaminated the cattle of England?

Secretary BRANNAN. Senator, I suppose almost any subject

Senator DOUGLAS. Are you people perpetrating fairy tales down there?

Senator BRICKER. There is no fairy tale to this thing. I think the technicians will show you that it is a very dangerous thing to import meat in carcass form and not in canned form.

Senator DOUGLAS. In cans?

Senator BRICKER. In cans, where the germ has been completely destroyed. We had this once in our State and it pretty nearly ruined the cattle industry for years.

Senator DOUGLAS. Is it brought in now in cans?

Secretary BRANNAN. Yes.

Senator DOUGLAS. Does that contaminate the cattle of this country? Secretary BRANNAN. No, because it is cooked in the can.

Senator CAPEHART. The germ is killed. The carcass, you see, has not been cooked.

Secretary BRANNAN. There are lots of trimmings from a beef carcass that go off into the garbage.

Senator ROBERTSON. I just wanted to straighten this out. There has never been any contention in Argentina that the carcass from an infected area will not spread the disease. The contention is that it was limited to Patagonia and they had large areas in the Argentine that did not have the infection, and therefore we ought to buy it from them. But the Secretary said it is pretty widespread all over the country and in certain areas where they do not appear to have it the cattle have set up an immunity against it and it does not show up in them, but the disease is still there.

Secretary BRANNAN. And every animal on the British Isles is vaccinated. They keep the disease down with a short-cycle vaccination of the type and character we have used to fight the disease in Mexico.

Senator BRICKER. Mr. Secretary, if we get this hoof-and-mouth disease into the herds of the great western plains, we will have worse than a subsidy problem.

Secretary BRANNAN. Of course we will. If you are talking about subsidy-and this can be off the record.

(Further discussion off the record.)

Senator BENTON. On the subsidy question, roughly, what was the total of agricultural subsidies during the past war? There was a billion, you said, for milk, and a billion for meat?

Secretary BRANNAN. Yes, but I hope you will not allow those figures to be caught up in your thinking about the present bills. I will have to supply that for the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be supplied for the record.

Secretary BRANNAN. It does run somewhere around 4 billion.

Senator BENTON. What part do you think that played in our effort to control prices?

Secretary BRANNAN. It was the sine qua non; controls could not have been effective without it.

Senator BENTON. Do you think by spending the 4 billion it enabled us to control prices?

Secretary BRANNAN. It did, and to keep up production, because lots of it was used to increase production, you see, or maintain production. Senator BENTON. What set of conditions might we have here in the foreseeable future where it would become essential to subsidize in order to control prices again?

Secretary BRANNAN. The possible situations within the limitations. of this law are three :

One, a dislocation in a canning area where it would be essential to start operating or to continue in operation a canning plant for the immediate processing of a quantity of fresh vegetables coming in on the market. That is one place which this bill would authorize doing.

The second would be applicable in the area of the small nonprocessing meat slaughterer, the man who just slaughters the beef, cuts the carcass and makes nothing else out of all the rest of it. He needs more margin, perhaps, than is permissible under the existing law.

Senator BRICKER. Would you cover in that margin the protection of the offals and the byproducts?

Secretary BRANNAN. Of course, we would.
Senator BRICKER. You would not?

Secretary BRANNAN. We would.

Senator BRICKER. That is what I thought. That is the only reason for it, as I can see it,

Secretary BRANNAN. That is right, and of course we need those for byproducts.

Senator BRICKER. That is what we lost in the black market.

Senator BENTON. Is there any possibility that a subsidy program a year back could have controlled the rise we have had in food prices? Secretary BRANNAN. I think that is a very difficult thing to say. My cwn impression is it probably would not have been necessary.

Senator BENTON. If you assume that you can control prices by fiat and passing laws

The CHAIRMAN. May I make a suggestion? Why not let the press and the other people come in, because I do not think this is anything that should be off the record.

Secretary BRANNAN. Not as far as I am concerned.

The CHAIRMAN. Does anyone have any questions off the record on the control of coffee? That is the main thing.

If not, we will proceed in open session.