3. Penicillin was found to be approximately 10 percent more effective than streptomycin or preparations containing both penicillin and streptomycin in eliminating mastitis producing organisms from the udders of cows in the Bureau of Dairy Industry herd. 4. The butterfat test of Holstein cows in the Beltsville herd was increased by using sires transmitting high test factors. Without culling low testing females, but with controlled environmental conditions, the test has been increased from 3.5 percent to approximately 3.9 percent. 5. Heifers raised on rations supplying only 70 percent of the accepted standards of total digestible nutrients, and subsequently put on full feed after calving, are producing satisfactorily. This would suggest that heifers can be reared satisfactorily at a lower feed cost than is possible through the use of generally recommended feeding standards. 6. In an attempt to assess possible long-time deleterious effects induced by feeding thyroprotein to dairy cattle to stimulate milk production, periodic electrocardiograms were obtained. Evidences of heart abnormalities were not constant and do not appear to affect the general health of cattle fed thyroprotein. 7. Wilted alfalfa silage is equal in feeding value to alfalfa hay for dairy heifers up to 8 months of age if supplemented with from 500 to 550 pounds of grain. If the grain ration is reduced to 400 pounds or less, growing heifers do not grow as well on alfalfa silage as on alfalfa hay, which indicates the importance of maintaining adequate grain feeding and energy consumption for growing heifers, particularly where the main roughage is in the form of alfalfa silage. 8. A quantitative method based on measurements of the epiphyseal cartilage as shown on X-ray pictures has been developed for assay of vitamin D in calves, making possible a more accurate appraisal of the antirachitic properties of various forages and the vitamin D requirements of calves. 9. Crushing hay, as it is cut, shortens the field curing period and increases the carotene and protein content, and does not cause greater nutrient losses. 10. The use of sulfur dioxide did not decrease top spoilage in the silo, but treatments throughout the silo while filling produced silage with a considerably higher carotene content than untreated silage. Alfalfa hay treated with sulfur dioxide during barn drying was preserved with 5 percent more dry matter and about 20 percent more carotene than untreated hay. These results indicate that nutrient losses during harvesting of forage crops may be reduced by the use of this material. Sulfur dioxide treatment is not proposed, however, as a substitute for good field-curing practices. 11. Fuller knowledge of the nutritional value of feeds is limited by the difficult procedures used in determining digestibility. Simplified procedures have been developed for the determination of digestibility which are less time-consuming and costly and which give comparable results to standard techniques. 12. 4,335 sires were proved in dairy herd improvement associations in 1949. Their daughters produced an average of 9,761 pounds of milk and 397 pounds of butterfat as compared to 9,607 and 391 pounds of milk and butterfat, respectively, in 1948. 27.9 percent of all sires proved during 1949 had daughters whose average butterfat production exceeded 425 pounds. 13. 2,104 sires were used in artificial breeding associations, of which 36.1 percent had 5 or more daughters with DHIA production records. The daughters produced an average of 436 pounds of butterfat. 14. Lipases cause the development of rancidity in milk products and also in fats and oils. This enzyme must be destroyed by heat, but studies of such destruction are dependent upon quantitative methods for estimating the lipase content. A colorimetric method has now been developed which will detect 1 pound of raw milk in 2,500 pounds of heated milk. 15. Lactose causes sandiness in ice cream. A lactase enzyme overcomes this sandiness by reducing the lactose. This permits the use in ice cream mixes of larger quantities of milk solids not fat, which are in large supply. A procedure has been developed to measure the lactase enzyme activity. 16. Sweet-cream buttermilk will improve the flavor and texture of ice cream as well as the apparent richness of the product. Buttermilk can be prepared, stored, and utilized in a sweetened condensed form. 17. Whey in liquid or dried form when used in sweet bakery goods prolongs the shelf life of cakes, cookies, etc., and produces a tender cakelike texture. The greater utilization in bakery goods and other foods would aid in solving the serious problem of whey disposal. 18. Whey proteins may be processed with the use of enzymes to form a product suitable for use in the manufacture of spreads and other food products, thereby, avoiding waste of the material. 19. If antibiotics are used to treat mastitic cows, the milk from at least three to four milkings following treatment should be discarded. The antibiotic action of such milk inhibits the bacterial action required in the manufacture of cheese. 20. The phosphatase test for determining the adequacy of pasteurization of milk used in manufacturing dairy products has been improved and adapted for use in determining whether alfalfa hay was field or artifically dried. Since there is an inverse relationship between the carotene and phosphatase content when these methods are used, the test can be used as an indication of the feeding value of hays with respect to their vitamin A content. Receipts from sales of dairy products and animals (deposited in miscellaneous receipts RMA DAIRY ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES Mr. WHITTEN. Now you have only one project that you are carrying on from funds of Research and Marketing Act. I believe they are title II funds, title I funds having been combined with your other funds. Now, what chance do you give these commodity committees interested in dairy research to review the work that you are doing and to counsel with you as to what is worth carrying on, what should be modified or changed, or what you should do in new fields. Dr. REED. We always have worked with the commodity committees since they were organized. Dr. Cardon has been working with them a great deal. This year the Dairy Advisory Committee held a 3-day meeting here, instead of just a meeting of I day or a day and a half. We gave them everything that we had, and we told them about our program. We reviewed most of our projects, and we gave them a complete history of the projects. We discussed those with them for 1 day in the office. Then the next day we took them out to Beltsville and we stayed the entire day. Not only did we discuss the regular work at Beltsville but we also discussed the regional breeding RMA projects, No. VI and No. VIII. One is the program in the South with the heat-resistant cattle and the other is with the north-central experiment stations. We discussed the whole program, and then we came back to Washington and had a meeting with them at the Dairy Products Laboratory to show them what we were doing there. From what they told us then and from what they have written to us since, they were very highly pleased with what we were doing. They have made certain recommendations which we have tried to follow. They have made recommendations heretofore and they were checking up on these recommendations this year. Mr. WHITTEN. I am glad to hear you say that, because it gives us a chance to bring you folks in the scientific end together with the folks outside of Government. Heretofore we have been carrying on your regular research, and then on the other hand we have tried to add special projects which were selected through this commodity committee set-up. Last year we put the money together in the hope that we would have a joint program, not that we are asking you to let your Bureau be run by outside interests. But we do feel that receiving counsel and advice on your program will be helpful to you as well as to them. I am glad to hear you say that. Dr. REED. We are very happy about the situation. We have had a splendid committee and we have received wonderful cooperation from them. As I say, we told them everything that we were doing and we took their counsel and advice into consideration. We are very happy with our committee. ADJUSTMENT IN RESEARCH TO DEFENSE PROBLEMS Mr. WHITTEN. You plan to operate next year, so far as your budget submission is concerned, at about the same rate you have this year? Dr. REED. We hope so. Mr. HORAN. I am happy to note that you emphasized the fact that you are trying to gear your activities to the defense efforts. We are asked to do that on every hand by everybody. I was wondering what fields of endeavor you are abandoning in order to gear yourselves to the defense effort. Dr. REED. We have made a critical study of our program, and what we are doing in that particular phase is this: We believe that we can do most good perhaps with our dairy-products research. Dr. Holm, who is in charge of that laboratory, has arranged to spend more of the time and efforts of his personnel and funds on some of these projects that are more important to the defense effort, and let some of the others drift along. Dr. Holm, you can explain just what projects those are. Dr. HOLM. We have shifted the emphasis in our work to defense problems, dropping some of the projects which naturally would be more academic in nature and going over to practical problems. I will give you just two examples. For instance, in our work on cheese, our experience during the last war was that they wanted Cheddar cheese of No. 1 quality. Now, one of the problems in the cheese industry today centers around personnel. We think that through a new method of making Cheddar cheese we can assist the labor situation, so we are switching some of the efforts on Swiss cheese over to emphasis on methods of making Cheddar cheese, which we know the industry is going to want. That is just one example. In the case of dried milk, we know that there are some problems in the packaging, problems that came up during the last war that were never settled. We were doing some fundamental work on fats studies; purely chemical studies, you might say. We dropped that work and are pursuing work on packaging, information on which is going to be needed. Those are two examples of how we have shifted the personnel's work, dropped projects and taken on other projects. Mr. HORAN. What materials do you use in your packaging work? Dr. HOLM. Are you thinking of the tin situation now? Mr. HORAN. Yes. Dr. HOLM. During the frst part of the last war you may remember that there was some difficulty with new tinning by an electrolytic method. The plate was pretty thin and it wasn't entirely satisfactory. They finally went to the authorities in control of that, and were allowed a heavier tin coating. Now we have been interested in that because on the inside of cans you have to have a certain weight of tin, while on the outside it is not so important. I might mention that we may have to take up some work that we did years ago on resins and plastics from lactic acid. We can produce lactic acid from whey and from the lactic acid we can produce a lacquer. That type of lacquer very nearly came into production during the last war to serve as a substitute for tin. We showed that it could be used even on evaporated-milk cans. milk cans if they ran short of tin. It could be used on We have already received a call from the Surgeon General's office on this problem and there is a possibility that this lacquer will find use in lieu of tin in some places. Mr. HORAN. How does your work coordinate with the work being done by the regional laboratories? Dr. HOLM. There is only one regional laboratory, I believe, that deals very much in dairy products. We have a cooperative set-up with them, and we get together with them, meeting at least once a year, to discuss the work. They also are interested in lactic acid, resins, and so forth. We felt that they were in a better position to do some of that work than we were, so we discontinued practically all of this type of work. DAIRY LABOR SITUATION Mr. HORAN. I assume that your difficulty in maintaining milkers and dairy workers does result in the loss of money. Dr. REED. Oh, yes. The worst part is the effect on experimental data, you know. As Mr. Andersen knows, and as anyone who runs a dairy farm knows, a cow does her best if she has one man milking her. We must operate on a 5-day week. But the cows milk 7 days a week. We are obliged to have three different men milking each cow every week. Now, with the labor situation as it is-and we are changing labor all the time-the condition is sometimes worse than that. We have plenty of records that indicate that one man is a better milker than another. We are not getting the results that we ought to get. Of course we are controlling this some by machine milking, but we have difficulty in getting good machine operators. Mr. WHITTEN. There are a lot of folks that have quit work, aren't there? Dr. REED. Yes; unfortunately that is right. Mr. ANDERSEN. Have you consulted with the legislative committee on agriculture on this particular problem, Dr. Reed? I refer to how the 40-hour week affects your institution? Dr. REED. We brought it up at the time we went on the 40-hour week but received no consideration. Mr. ANDERSEN. Don't you think it would be your business to ask them to look into a possible exemption for you in this particular field? I believe we could get that through the Congress. Mr. KEMPER. I believe the Department would have to bring that up. I don't believe we could. Mr. ANDERSEN. That is right. When I say "you" I mean the Department. Dr. REED. I appreciate that. Mr. ANDERSEN. I do believe that something should be done toward correcting that situation. Mr. WHITTEN. Either that or you should start research to develop a breed of cattle that will milk just 5 days a week. Mr. KEMPER. Of course, the milkers themselves would rather work the other days and get the increased pay. They would much rather work the longer week. The paid overtime at Beltsville last year was $10,000. Mr. WHITTEN. How much did you say the overtime was? Mr. KEMPER. $10,000. Mr. WHITTEN. We thank you very much, Dr. Reed. We have been glad to have you gentlemen with us. BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY WITNESSES DR. G. E. HILBERT, CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY C. F. SPEH, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY DR. G. W. IRVING, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY DR. J. R. MATCHETT, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY DR. W. M. SCOTT, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY H. A. DONOVAN, ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL JOSEPH C. WHEELER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF FINANCE, |