I feel the real problem before us is how we correct 20 years of mistakes that have bankrupt our farms and ranches and consequently our Nation. Some positive solutions must be implemented.

First, we must have tighter controls on the importation of meat. into this country. Since the American beef herds are presently at a low level and would take several years of growth to supply our needs, and because we have international trade agreements, I do not advocate an immediate total halt of imports. I do suggest a tariff on imported meat so it is sold in this country on a par with the American producer, feeder, and packer instead of allowing it to enter this country at the unfair competition level it does now. This imbalance between domestic and imported meat prices has encouraged cheap foreign goods and debased foreign currencies to determine the value of American goods and dollars.

Second, we need a pricing system so livestock can be maintained at a par level of exchange within the U.S. economy. It would then earn enough income to afford its share of the Nation's production of grains, machinery, labor, wages, and taxes.

The livestock industry has advanced greatly in the past decade in the areas of storing and processing meat. This will allow greater flexibility in distribution and marketing when the increased price makes it feasible.

I would like to comment on some of my statements.

On the tighter import controls, I feel it is necessary for several reasons to have a tariff system worked out here. One of the reasons is we are not only cheating the American producers, but the foreign producers that are shipping into this country by their low prices. Import tariffs should be set aside at around the 110-percent level and we should pay the foreign producer at the same level it would cost us.

This would do two things. It would give them 100 percent of the goods to go back to their country. We would keep 10 percent of these tariffs in a coffer to act as a buffer so that when these people wanted to buy U.S. manufactured goods, they would have a 10-percent credit coming back to their nation.

This would help protect the American producer of beef. It would help protect and give income to foreign producers and give them an advantage in buying American manufactured goods which would help reemploy our labor and put them back to work producing goods.

As to the American meatpackers, I said that we had three in Oregon. We are down to two packinghouses in the State of Oregon. I was at a meeting the other day in Oregon where one of the last three closed down. He said it was simply impossible for him to stay in business as long as there is imported meat, and as long as Government regulations continued against his operation. He has had to shut the doors down. There is nothing he could do.

The entire southern area of Oregon and northern California has no place to slaughter animals. We are broke. We have got to take some very dramatic steps to change that.

We have imports which have broken the American cattlemen and the grain producers. Now they are close to breaking the American Nation. They have to be corrected.

I very much support the 100-percent tariff system and 100-percent parity.

Thank you.

Senator HODGES. Thank you very much for your statement.
Mr. RODGERS. May I add something to my statement?

Senator HODGES. Surely; we will add your statistics.

Mr. RODGERS. Charles Walters was going to testify before this committee, but he could not make it. We had to cancel for him. He asked me if I would enter into the testimony his book on parity, balancing the economy nationwide. It is entitled "Parity, the key to prosperity unlimited." He gave me permission to do it.

Senator HODGES. It will be made a part of the record. I thank you. I hope somebody will listen soon.

Mr. RODGERS. You and me both.

Senator HODGES. Your complete statement and Charles Walters's book entitled "Parity," will be included in the record.*

Next will be Mr. Sloan of Hamilton, Mo. and Beverly Tracy of Haigler, Nebr.

Why do you not go first, Mrs. Tracy?

STATEMENT OF BEVERLY TRACY, HAIGLER, NEBR.

Ms. TRACY. Gentlemen: I would like to introduce myself. I'm Beverly Tracy, a rancher from Haigler, Nebr., in western Nebraska. I am here because, like so many others, I couldn't make a living in the ranching business. I was forced to go into something on the side to pay for being a rancher.

Many farm and ranch wives went to town to get a job to supplement their incomes. This took jobs away from other people who needed them in our small towns. However, I found it impossible to go to town to get a job, because I'm the hired hand at our ranch. The pay is poor, and the hours are worse. If I went to work in town, my husband would have to hire help to replace me.

Twelve years ago I went into the hog business. I run a farrow-tofinish unit of about 40 sows. I farrow three groups of sows every other month. This isn't an easy business; the hours are long. When I have sows farrowing, I put in about 20 hours a day. There is no pay for overtime, either.

As a hog producer I am subject not only to the weather which can wipe out a whole bunch of hogs with one storm, but also to the threat of disease. Pork producers have made great strides in the fight against disease, but we are now being faced with the threat of the withdrawal of many of the antibiotics that have helped so much in swine production. The loss of sulfa and other feed and water additives would leave swine producers at the mercy of serious disease problems, which in many cases would make production impossible. Disease in swine herds spreads very rapidly and are very contagious. It is virtually impossible to treat these large outbreaks of disease except in the feed and

water.

Antibiotics are used in the prevention of baby pig diseases, to improve feed efficiency, increase weight gains, and improve reproduction performance. The ban of antibiotics would cause a huge economic

*See p. 241 for the prepared statement of Mr. Rodgers and pp. 245-75 for the abovereferred to book entitled "Parity".

impact not only on the pork producers, but for the consumers as well. I understand that some of the regulatory steps being taken now are not in agreement with the FDA's own expert task force findings.

Pork producers have greatly improved our product in the past 20 years. We have improved our product more than any other of the meat producing segments of agriculture. I think we have a right to be proud of our accomplishments. However, the "USDA Handbook No. 8" that is used for nutritional information for many sources is still using data from research reports done in 1958. I think it's time the information on pork be brought up to date to show the true facts about today's better pork.

The straw that broke the camel's back, or in this case the farmer's back, is the talk of the ban of nitrites in curing pork. A complete ban of nitrites could cause the destruction of the entire pork industry. Nitrites are used in 70 percent of the pork today, and in many other products as well. Damage to the grain farmer would also be great as hogs eat one-third of the corn grown in this country.

A nitrite ban on bacon alone would cost pork producers about $500 million a year.

Nitrites are essential in cured meat because: (1) they prevent botulism; (2) they give cured meat flavor and appearance; and (3) they retard oxidation.

Nitrites are the only substance that will do all of these things. No substance has been found to replace it. An expert panel appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture was formed in 1973 to study the problems of nitrites and nitrates in bacon.

Adjustments were made in the curing of bacon to meet their recommendations. The American Meat Institute undertook their own study and found that 90 percent of the bacon contained no nitrosamines at all. A few samples showed minute amounts of nitrosamines after severe frying. All available information indicates these amounts are not harmful to humans. You would have to eat 15,415 pounds of bacon per day, every day of your life to get a level that could give you cancer. The real threat of botulism is a much greater danger to me than is the danger from getting cancer from eating over 15,000 pounds of bacon per day. Anyone eating that much bacon each day should catch something.

Most vegetables have a higher level of nitrites naturally than the 120 parts per million used to cure bacon. Lettuce has 600 to 1,700 p/m, carrots 100 to 900 p/m, and radishes have 1,500 to 1,800 p/m.

Ms. Carol Foreman told a group of us when we were here last January that she could ban anything that may cause cancer. Maybe Ms. Foreman should start by banning something that does cause cancer: the Sun. That would solve all of our problems.

Frankly, the pork producers feel the USDA is playing the game "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and we're the donkey. I am sure as members of this committee you will look into these matters and consider them carefully. It is about time we put some commonsense back into our programs and stopped being like the little boy that was always yelling "Wolf!”

I know as members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, you are well aware of the problems that are facing family farmers. There has

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been a steady stream of farmers coming to Washington. When farmers and ranchers like myself come here, there has to be something wrong.

I have become a part of the American Agriculture Movement because of the problems in rural America and the need to save the family farms. I have lived with corporate farming coming to my community and I haven't liked what it has done. I live in some of what was the best sandhill cattle country in this Nation-not so anymore. The ranchers couldn't make a living, so they sold their ranches. Big money, some of it foreign, bought the land. Now they have plowed up all the grass, hills and all, just because there was water under it and they thought they could develop it and make a fast buck. Many did. Now we are facing the possibility of running out of water. These corporations don't care because they won't be around.

They have added nothing to our community, for they do no business here. They buy their supplies from big suppliers. They cannot begin to compare to the family farmers' efficiency. If the family farms of this Nation go, so will the freedom of this country. When this Nation becomes dependent on large corporations, the people will pay dearly for food, if they eat at all.

Family farms must be saved. We must have a fair return on our investment and our labor. We cannot borrow our way out of debt anymore than this Nation can. We are entitled to a fair living just like everyone else.

Thank you.

Senator HODGES. I would just like to make one or two comments. In Arkansas, the symbol for our football and basketball team is the razorback hog.

I met with the pork producers from Arkansas several weeks ago. They gave me a lot of material explaining it.

Ms. TRACY. I am sure. They have left a lot of information.
Senator HODGES. I hope it will be read.

MS. TRACY. I am sure it will be.

The pork producers are very concerned with the use of antibiotics. and the correct use of them. It will make a terrific impact on pork production.

Senator HODGES. Part of the problem is that people who are making those regulations have never seen a hog operation.

They have no idea how quickly it can be wiped out. They have no idea what happens when it gets hot or excessively cold or how much disease there is, or how much you have to inoculate. If you do not, you will have no operation at all. That is unfortunate. When they start balancing the effect of what they are doing, they are taking the whole basis out by doing away with antibiotics.

MS. TRACY. We feel it will set us back 20 years in the production of our product. Some of the incidents that have happened in Nebraska, for example, are that some people who have never even fed sulfa have had their operations quarantined for sulfa residue. They never traced back where the sulfa came from. They did not feed sulfa and they had a quarantine.

Senator HODGES. The only way you can prove they are wrong is to kill some of the hogs.

MS. TRACY. You have to slaughter five hogs to prove they are wrong and you cannot sell any hogs until you have done this.

Senator HODGES. It is an incredible circus and I am sympathetic. Some of these people who made the rules should see a hog operation. There are five close to where I live. Once you've seen them, you will have a better understanding of the operation.

Ms. TRACY. Yes.

Senator HODGES. Mr. Sloan.

STATEMENT OF TED SLOAN, HAMILTON, MO.

Mr. SLOAN. Mr. Chairman, my name is R. T. Sloan of Hamilton, Mo. I am a farmer. I represent concerned farmers and ranchers of the American Agriculture Movement.

The American Agriculture Movement may be a loose knit group, but we are large and are growing daily. We will not go away, give up, nor be appeased with words or token actions, like throwing us a bone.

We evidently don't know how to get the administration or the Congress of this country to act on our problem, but we are learning. We watched and listened to the coal miners, dockworkers, steel industry, oil companies, and the large financial individuals and institutions. We are learning from them.

Are we to be different, act different, be satisfied with less? Must we do the same things to accomplish our desires? "To have the opportunity to be equal."

I would like to inject that I have lost my rear in the cattle business. I am just about out of it. Right now, I am in the hog business and grain production business.

Under the 1964 Meat Import Act, we have become the largest beef importing country in the world. We import about two billion pounds of carcass beef annually-this is one-third of all beef traded on the world market-this is equivalent to about 4 million live cows. In addition, 1 million live cattle arrive in this country for slaughter from Canada and Mexico annually.

In 1965, when this law went into effect we imported 942 million pounds annually. This year we can expect an additional 30 million pounds to come in under this law and yet we are still liquidating cow herds due to low prices. We have the largest liquidation of cow herds in history according to USDA. The cattle inventory has dropped to 116 million head as of January 1.

Cattlemen have sold cattle at a profit only 15 months out of the last 54 months dating back to August of 1973. The cattlemen have lost about $136 per cow each year for the last 3 years. This is in our area kind of an average figure, but I think you will see from testimony given earlier today that this is low and we don't have large changes on this figure.

The average number of beef cows per year during this period was 43.7 million head, take this times the average loss of $136 and we have an annual loss of over $5.9 billion. (Reference Agricultural Statistics USDA 1977.)

Cattlemen have received 100 percent of parity for their product only 2 years since 1960, and the parity ratio has dipped to the lowest on record for the last 4 years.

Now, I ask the members of the committee, would you pay for the privilege of serving in the Senate? That's what you are asking the American farmer and rancher to do.