pint of milk daily, to our children who are not getting milk rather than to provide an additional two or three half pints for children already receiving milk.

There is nothing in this program that intends to cut down the school lunch program while there is demand.

Senator HOLLAND. It is not intended to cut it down-the only thing cut is the budget recommendation; is that not so?

Mr. MEHREN. The only thing that is cut down is the budget recommendation; yes.

Senator HOLLAND. Thank you.

Mr. MEHREN. So, we seek to balance needs against our child nutrition resources. We believe, deeply and sincerely, that our resources are now inadequate to meet present pressing needs. This is why we have proposed legislation to broaden this overall program.

So far as the nutritional needs of our children are concerned, there are clear and present necessities now unmet, the urgency of which greatly exceeds the need for additional milk to children alreay receiving it. We want to meet those unmet needs with balance and with appropriate allocations to needs of high priority.

Senator MONDALE. Would you yield at that point?
Mr. MEHREN. Yes.

Senator MONDALE. Do you believe that we are providing unnecessary milk to certain schoolchildren at this time and thus wasting milk? Mr. MEHREN. I personally doubt having reared two children and one is 6 feet 4 inches tall weighing 240 pounds-that there is any such thing as unnecessary milk.

Senator MONDALE. So that you would not say that we are wasting milk?

Mr. MEHREN. I am trying to say in a polite and unprovocative way that I think that I could use that $80 million, to be truthful, under present circumstances more effectively in extending food to kids who are not now getting food, than I can under the special milk program.

Senator MONDALE. There is an implication there that we cannot have the one without the other. I think that these programs are a good investment. You would be on better ground to say that we should expand and improve in those areas where there is compelling human need, rather than cut out a program in which there is no waste now, which is getting much nutritional need into the people. And it seems to me that one can be accomplished without destroying the other.

Senator HOLLAND. I think that the witness has already said that there is nothing in this proposed bill that would diminish the school lunch program. The only thing that would tend to diminish it would be the recommendation of the budget.

Senator MONDALE. I would endorse wholeheartedly what Mr. Mehren has said about the children in our country who are not receiving decent diets, whether it is milk or school lunches. That is beyond a doubt the case and an overlooked problem that ought to be considered. I would like to see it in addition to the very fine existing school milk program. The assumption that we cannot have the one without the other will not stand up under analysis.

Mr. MEHREN. I will cover this a little bit later in my paper.
Senator HOLLAND. Proceed.

Mr. MEHREN. Many other changes have occurred. In my judgment, average income levels to dairy farmers are still far too low in terms of economics and of equity. We in the Department are doing everything we can within our statutory powers and our resources to raise earned farm incomes to acceptable levels, and we have had substantial success-but yet not enough-in the past 5 years. And, especially in the dairy industry there is still inadequate farmer income despite the great progress of these past 5 years. We are keenly aware of and deeply sympathetic to the plight of many dairy farmers. We shall not abate our efforts to find means for the family dairy farm to get incomes equal to those earned elsewhere.

Output of dairy products has in fact shrunk in absolute terms over the past year. Stocks in Government storage have been depleted, and relatively little has been acquired in this present spring period. There have been 13 consecutive months of downturn in monthly production as compared to the same month 1 year earlier. There is disturbing evidence, not compelling but surely disturbing, that the production basis for dairy products may actually be shrinking.

Thus, the longstanding reason for a special milk program to alleviate surplus production conditions does not now exist. There is no evidence that there will be such surplus production in the near future. We do not now need a special milk program for this reason.

There has been a tremendous increase in average real incomes earned in this Nation. Food costs this year will be a lower proportion of real incomes than ever before, while average farm income, happily, is at the highest level in history. A far greater proportion of American families are now able to pay all-or a large part of the costs of special milk or other foods for children than ever before.

Yet there are many Americans who do not fully participate in the record levels of prosperity now prevailing. Their children have the same nutritional needs as those born of more fortunate parents. The consequence of malnutrition among children of poor families is no different from those for other children. Such children need milk, and we want them to have it. But they also need balanced meals. They need balanced meals, including milk, more than they need milk alone. This is why we seek legislation which will permit us to distribute our resources with balance among a battery of needs.

There has also been a tremendous awakening among our people to the needs for adequate child nutrition, to the nutritional gap that prevails in parts of our population, and to the consequences of not filling it. For 20 years we have relied on the national school lunch program as our basic effort in child nutrition. While there were massive milk surpluses, we supplemented this effort with the special milk program.

The national school lunch program has grown. It has served this Nation well. The program operates in public and in nonprofit private schools in which three-fourths of our children are enrolled. This year, 18 million children are participating. This is more than 36 percent of all children enrolled in school.

Senator HOLLAND. I notice that the statement that the school lunch program has both grown and served the Nation well. You do not mean to imply that the special milk program has not served the Nation well?

Mr. MEHREN. I very carefully stated about two pages down the road that I believe that it has served the Nation magnificently.

Senator HOLLAND. Thank you.

Mr. MEHREN. The Department thus has had 20 years of experience with a program that now provides from one-third to one-half the daily nutritional requirements of the children who can and want to participate. We believe with deep conviction that expansion and extension of this kind of program offers the best way to closing the remaining gaps in child nutrition.

Such a program also offers the broadest possible market, both present and potential, for all our farmers. It is the largest nonprofit institutional outlet in the Nation. It is the best market promotion mechanism in the food industry. It helps to mold the future food preferences of our children.

Milk is the major item in this market. Let me cite a few figures from a 1963 survey of the values of foods used in school lunches:

Together, fluid milk and dairy products accounted for $406 million, about one-third of total food costs.

Senator HOLLAND. I judge from this statement that you are very strong for the school lunch program?

Mr. MEHREN. Quite honestly, I think it is the one program in the Department of Agriculture in which I have by far the deepest pride and respect. It is a beautifully operated program.

Senator HOLLAND. I wonder how that reply and the recommendation of the budget as echoed by the Department of Agriculture, providing for a reduction of the school lunch program, can be correfated.

Mr. MEHREN. I believe that all of my colleagues will share my view. The formation of the budget, as you know far better than I do, involves a variety of targets, of initial submission, of constraints imposed by overall targets, of discussion, of tradeoffs among different programs. And the final submission to the Congress is not necessarily inconsistent with my personal view that this is an excellent program,

sir.

Senator HOLLAND. This is a very nice way for you to say that you do not agree with the budget conclusion.

Mr. MEHREN. I believe that as long as I work for Mr. Freeman I would agree with every last decision that comes out of the Department of Agriculture, sir. And you would not-I am not being offensive or impertinent in this statement- but you would not expect me to do anything else.

Senator HOLLAND. We can draw our own conclusions as to your disapproval of the budget's position in this, can we not?

Mr. MEHREN. I hope that you do not draw that too definitively, because so long as I work for the Department of Agriculture it is my duty to support every decision that is made and not to give the slightest impression that I disapprove of it, and were I to do so, I would be grossly immoral, and the alternative is to go home to the city of San Francisco, in which I live.

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Senator HOLLAND. The second question. You have some responsibility to state very frankly to the Congreass what your own personal opinion is in appearing here as a witness.

Mr. MEHREN. Of course I do, and I am doing that. And I will answer your question in this way: I do respect the special school program.

Senator HOLLAND. We are talking about the lunch program.

Mr. MEHREN. I respect it very much. I know a good deal about it. I worked with it for 10 years. I am not at all certain that if I had $82 million to put into our total food program that despite the number of friends I have in the dairy industry sitting here and elsewhere and despite the attitude that I know that prevails in the schools to some measure, at least, I would find a better place to put it than in the milk. That is an "iffy" statement. I would like to extend the school lunch tremendously. There are huge needs. If all I had was $82 million, and if I had my personal decision as to where to use it, I do not think that I would put it all in special milk.

Senator HOLLAND. I think that we were talking just now, though, about the reduction of the school lunch program which I understand from your testimony you are very strongly for, which the Budget Bureau has recommended for a decrease. You have just said that you are very strong for the expansion of that program.

Mr. MEHREN. Yes, sir.

Senator HOLLAND. And the conclusion is rather inescapable that you are not in accord with the Budget Bureau's recommendation for the reduction of that program.

Mr. MEHREN. I would not really want to say.

Senator HOLLAND. We will not press the question. Go right ahead. Mr. MEHREN. Thank you, Senator.

In 1946, the Congress set out the purposes of the school lunch program:

** as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the Nation's children and to encourage the domestic consumption of agricultural commodities and other food. ***

The local, State, and Federal people who have worked together have done well. But the program as it now operates in the late sixties is not fully meeting the committment made by the Congress

in 1946.

Senator HOLLAND. I am going to ask Senator Mondale to preside over the committee hearing, if you will be kind enough to do so. I am glad to see that you are a gentleman.

Mr. MEHREN. Many proposals have been made to remove one or another of the limitations inhibiting the local, State, and Federal people from meeting the committment fully. Other agencies of Government have tried to close parts of the gaps and to fill some of the unmet needs. Their legislative authorities have given them greater flexibility of action than we now have. We have cooperated wholeheartedly with these efforts, but in the main they are still largely uncoordinated and fragmented.

We have carefully studied our programs to identify priorities among unmet needs. We have identified the things we need to do this important job as it should be done.

We cannot now provide the full range of needed foods to children in preschool activities, in day-care centers, or during the summer

unless they are formally enrolled in a regular school program. know that many children arrive as school hungry in the morning, and not always as a result of parental delinquency. We can donate a few surplus commodities. There is not much else we can do to help initiate or maintain a nutritionally sound breakfast program.

The President has recognized both the commitment of the Congress and our inability under present authorities fully to meet it. He has submitted to the Congress a bill called the Child Nutrition Act. Its cornerstone is the present national school lunch program. Under that bill, we would operate the school lunch program precisely as at present. It would require milk in every meal. It would reach more schoolchildren and we would be able to help preschool children.

The terms of that bill would make the special milk program a a permanent activity, just as S. 2921 does. But it does not fix appropriations at present levels. It would set first priorities within available funds to make milk available to children in schools without a lunch program and to needy children who require supplementary milk servings but are unable to pay for them.

The Child Nutrition Act would also authorize initiation of a pilot school breakfast program. It would authorize us to operate pilot summer feeding activities. We would be able to reach children in many different situations-in recreation and training programs and in summer camps. Many year-round activities such as day-care centers, settlement houses, and neighborhood houses would also be eligible. And milk would be included in all of the meals in all of these activities.

The Child Nutrition Act would enable us to try to remove the equipment barrier or at least to lower it-in the low-income schools that simply cannot afford minimum equipment for food service.

I would add here that in Watts and the city of Los Angeles, which is not a poor city, one of the major inhibiting factors to feeding these kids is the almost total absence of equipment. And this is true in a great many other communities.

And, for 20 years State educational agencies have administered the school lunch program without a penny of Federal funds to help carry the costs of administration. Many children thereby have been denied access to milk and the other equally essential foods required for inclusion in school lunches. The kind of balance and comprehensive nutrition effort we have in mind will require the States to assume far more responsibilities.

We believe that the Child Nutrition Act puts first things first. There is no substitute-not even by way of additional milk-for a balanced meal that includes both milk and other foods not one whit less essential. The standards for such a meal are based on tested nutritional research.

The State agencies that would administer this program have accumulated know-how available nowhere else in child nutrition, meal appeal, food purchasing, storage, and distribution techniques and sanitation practices.

We favor strongly the continued inclusion of milk in all meals for children. We favor getting milk to children who can't get it because they get no lunches. There is no longer a burdensome surplus of dairy products. If we must choose between additional milk for children already getting milk and a balanced ration in general for