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TABLE 4.-State oleomargarine excises and license fees, May 15, 1948

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1 Manufacture or sale of colored margarine prohibited.

2 Tax applies to oleomargarine (colored or uncolored) not made from oils and fats (specifically named by the statute) that are largely derived from domestic materials.

3 Idaho also prohibits the manufacture or sale of colored margarine.

Minnesota's tax applies to oleomargarine not containing a minimum percentage (65 percent) of animal fats, as well as that made of foreign materials. Wyoming's tax applies only to vegetable oleomargarine (containing 20 percent or less of animal fats).

5 The license is for 2 years.

• Tennessee's tax applies to all colored margarine, regardless of ingredients. Uncolored margarine is exempt if made from domestic oils and fats.

Senator BARKLEY. May I ask you whether your figure of 40 and 90 as comparative prices of oleomargarine and butter, whether that includes the tax of 10 cents per pound? I suppose you are talking at the retail price. Does that include the tax?

Mr. WIGGINS. We are talking about retail prices, including the tax. Senator BARKLEY. That includes the tax, whether levied on the colored or otherwise.

Mr. WIGGINS. There is very little of the colored sold. They sell it white.

Senator BARKLEY. Yes, I know.

Mr. WIGGINS. And give some coloring with it.

Senator BARKLEY. Yes, I know. They buy the coloring or furnish it when you buy the white, and color it at home.

Mr. WIGGINS. That is correct.

Senator BARKLEY. Or on the way home.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

Senator BUTLER. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Wiggins made a remark about the very few cases that have been brought by the Government for violation of the tax regulations.

Mr. WIGGINS. Yes.

Senator BUTLER. As an indication that it is not needed. I do not think we need to enter into any argument here, but I wonder if that would not be an illustration of the effectiveness of the tax that has been in effect all of the time, rather than otherwise.

Mr. WIGGINS. I think each one can draw his own conclusions. My opinion is that the Pure Food and Drug Act takes care of the type of violations that I think the Congress had in mind, when it originally imposed the tax.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

Thank you very much.

Mr. WIGGINS. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Congressman Rivers, we will be very glad to hear from you. Will you identify yourself?

STATEMENT OF HON. S. MENDEL RIVERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Mr. RIVERS. My name is S. Mendel Rivers, Member of the House from South Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, it is quite a difficult assignment to follow my two distinguished South Carolinians who preceded me here before this splendid committee, my own colleague and senior Senator, the Honorable Mr. Maybank, who has worked hard on this subject, and who has introduced legislation, proposed legislation on numerous occasions, also our splendid Carolinian Mr. A. L. M. Wiggins, who did such a splendid job in the Treasury Department. I need not say anything about this other fine Senator we have over here who has likewise helped us a great deal on this subject.

Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for this opportunity to appear on my bill, H. R. 2245, which passed the House on the 20th of April by such a large vote, as you recall 260 to 107. My bill passed the House without one single amendment, saving and except the effective date, which was necessary to bring the bill, having been introduced each year, up to date, and the effective date of which would be July 1 of this year.

My bill is simple and to the point. Beginning on July 1 of this year, the tax on margarine is repealed. The bill, of course, does not affect the duty imposed by paragraph 7 of the Tariff Act of 1930 on imports of margarine, currently fixed at 7 cents per pound by the Geneva agreement.

This duty will remain in effect, as well as the tax of 15 cents per pound imposed by section 2306 of the Internal Revenue Code on margarine imported from foreign countries.

This is my opinion, and that of the congressional committee over there which helped me prepare the act which I am prepared to say now the passage of the bill in my opinion would not repeal certain sections of the Internal Revenue Code relating to manufacturers and

dealers of margarine under section 2302 of the Internal Revenue Code, for example, which requires the manufacturer to file a bond to package and mark margarine in certain prescribed ways.

Neither would it affect the Pure Food and Drug Act laws applicable to this product or the statutes under which the Federal Trade Commission operates.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope that someone during the hearing will introduce statistics on the imports of oleomargarine and constituent materials.

(The information referred to appears on p. 50.)

Mr. RIVERS. Thank you, sir.

My bill merely places the manufacture and sale of margarine on the same footing with other manufacturers of wholesale and edible. products. Progress knows no time salient or season. The progress made in the manufacture of margarine has been so rapid that today margarine is no longer a substitute for butter. It is the coequal of butter.

For the information of this distinguished committee, I have asked one of the largest chemical houses in the Nation to prepare for me a report of ingredients commonly used in margarine, and I have that information for the record here, Mr. Chairman, also along with the report from the Treasury Department as far back as the year 1942, and if you want me to, I can tell you just what margarine contains, or I can place that in the record, even to the coloring of it. A lot of people do not know what is the coloring of margarine or the coloring used in butter.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it would be well to have some information on that.

Mr. RIVERS. All right, sir.

It contains fats and oils per thousand pounds, 346,346,000, that is in thousands of pounds, or percentage of 79.4; milk, a percentage of 17.2; salt, 2.98; glycerin derivatives, 0.231; and lecithin, 0.231. Senator BARKLEY. What is that?

Mr. RIVERS. I can read about that.

Senator BARKLEY. Do you know what that is?

Mr. RIVERS. I have it down here.

Senator BARKLEY. You can do that later.

Mr. RIVERS. All right, sir.

The milk is used to impart body and flavor. The same cultures are used on pasteurizing milk. This report came from a chemical house in this Nation. I can also give you the name of that, if you care for it.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it would be well to give us the name.

Mr. RIVERS. Fritshie Co. of New York. I can give you the address later on.

That is the same used in the processing of butter and the same sanitary precautions are maintained. The culture developed the butter flavor. Natural butter made from sweet cream is lacking in proper flavor. Salt is used to stop the action of bacteria used in the milk culture. When the proper amount of flavor is developed, salt is added to the culture. This is also done in the manufacture of salted butter, which will remain stable over a longer period of time than will the unsalted butter.

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Glycerin derivatives are used to stabilize the aqueous emulsion of fats which is margarine. Without such stabilization margarine is less stable than natural butter which on melting will not separate, and particularly will not splatter on frying. Such glycerin derivatives are closely related to natural fats, are nontoxic, and are approved for use in foods.

Lecithin, obtained principally from soybean oil, is used as a stabilizer. It is a natural derivative and a component of vegetable oils in varying proportions.

Sodium benzoate, an approved preservative, is sometimes used to the extent of not more than one-tenth of 1 percent. If used, a declaration must be made on the label.

Vitamin concentrates, principally vitamin A, are used in order to increase the nutrient value of margarine. If added, the margarine must by law contain not less than 9,000 U. S. P. units of vitamin A per pound.

Margarine therefore may have more vitamin potency than natural butter, and in general more than so-called winter butter, which as you know is colored about 8 months out of the year, and is very low in vitamin content. The cows cannot get the green food.

This includes color and flavor. Colors are usually oil-soluble colors, certified as to their stability for foods by the United States Department of Agriculture. These colors are known as F, D, and C, Yellow No. 3, and Yellow No. 4. The yellow color is obtained from annotto seed, which is used to colored butter, and may also be used. Senator BUTLER. Is this part of the statement of the chemical company that made the analysis?

Mr. RIVERS. They got this from the Department of Agriculture, and from their own analyses.

Senator BUTLER. The part you are reading now, is this still a quote from the report you got from the chemical company?

Mr. RIVERS. Yes, sir. The only permitted flavor is diacetyl, which is the same product as obtained from the cream in making butter, and is chemically identical with the chief flavor constituent of butter, and that is the report.

Now, scientists, and I am glad to say, Mr. Chairman, that my good friend, Dr. Anton Carlson is here this morning; I do not know whether he is scheduled to testify; I assume he is; but I will submit for the record a very fine writing by him and Dr. Larry Leichenger, and Dr. George Eisenberg on margarine and growing children. (The information referred to follows.)

[Reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association, February 7, 1948, vol. 136, pp. 388-391; copyright, 1948, by American Medical Association]

MARGARINE AND THE GROWTH OF CHILDREN

Harry Leichenger, M. D., George Eisenberg, M. D., and Anton J. Carlson, Ph. D., M. D., Chicago

This study was undertaken to determine whether there is any nutritional difference, as shown by increases in height and weight in significantly large groups of children, when the source of supplementary table fat in their diets is vegetable (margarine) rather than animal (butter).

For a number of years there has been some controversy among nutritionists and other workers in the field of fat nutrition regarding the relative merits of animal and vegetable fats in the human diet. A great deal of experimentation

has been carried out, the laboratory rat being used, in the main, as the experimental animal.

Little experimental work has been done in fat nutrition, however, among human subjects. For that reason, the present study was decided on. To insure valid results, examinations of the 267 children (white) included in this study were made for a period of 2 years.

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As early as 1925 Holmes, 1 in studies carried out on human subjects, found that margarine was from 93 to 97 percent digestible. Bunker, in 1927, stated:

"Beef fat excreted in the milk of the cow is no different in its origin from beef fat which is retained within the animal, although the chemistry of butter fat and oil differ somewhat. Each is a suitable food. The vegetable oils, also, such as olive oil, palm oil, cocoanut oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, and others are all suitable foodstuffs. The digestibility of the various animal and vegetable fats is high.” Some years later Carlson stated: "All the scientific data on the digestibility, flavor and color of the dietary fats show clearly that there is no significant difference in digestibility between animal and vegetable fats and that the acceptability of those fats in regard to color and flavor is a matter of past conditioning of the individual and of no other significance in nutrition."

Boutwell and others, after experimental studies on rats, concluded: "1. With lactose as the sole carbohydrate * * * rats showed superior growth when fed butter or lard as compared to corn oil, cocoanut oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, olive oil and hydrogenated cottonseed oil. 2. With a mixture of carbohydrates composed of sucrose, starch, dextrose, dextrin and lactose in the diet, the average growth response of the animals fed vegetable oils was equal to that of the animals fed butter and lard. The growth rate on this ration was more rapid than when all the carbohydrate was present as lactose. 3. Properly fortified oleomargarine fats gave growth equal to butter fat over a period of 6 weeks when the above mixture or carbohydrates was incorporated in the rations." Deuel, on the other hand, found no difference in the growth of weanling rats at any time over a 12 week period whether they were fed mineralized skimmed milk powder, vitamin supplements and butter, or corn, cottonseed, peanut or soybean oils, or margarine. The extent of growth was confirmed at 3 and 6 weeks by roentgen determinations of length of the tibia. Also, the efficiencies of conversion of these various fats to body tissue were identical. These experiments refute the idea that butter fat possesses certain fatty acids not present in other fats, which are essential to growth.

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The Council on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association stated: "It is therefore possible to conclude that at present there is no scientific evidence to show that the use of fortified margarine in an average adult diet would lead to nutritional difficulties. A similar statement is probably justified in the case of growing children, but preliminary reports from animal experiments indicate that more work is necessary before any specific conclusions can be made." Graves stated: "When pure, all fats are equally available for the energy needs of the body * * * the shortening powers and keeping qualities of [both butter and margarine] are about the same and they are equally assimilable." Again, Bloor 8 pointed out: "Very little need be said about the relative nutritional value of fats and hence of availability and distribution for the reason that most of the ordinary food fats of both plant and animal origin consist mainly of the same few fatty acids-oleic, palmitic and stearic-in varying proportions, and it is to be expected that they would not differ much in digestibility or in metabolic usefulness."

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From the department of pediatrics, University of Illinois College of Medicine. Aided by a grant from the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers. the grant provided that findings from the study could be published, regardless of results. Holmes, A. D.: Digestibility of Oleomargarine, Boston M. and S. J, 192: 1210 (June 18), 1925.

2 Bunker, J. W. M.: Evidence Concerning the Reputed Health Values of Fats: A Review of the Literature. Am. J. Jub. Health 17: 997 (October) 1927.

3 Carlson, A. J. Facts and Fancies About Food Fats, Am. J. Pub. Health, 31: 1181 (November) 1941.

Boutwell, R. K.; Geyer, R. P.; Elvehjem, C. A., and Hart, E. B.: Further Studies on Comparative Value of Butter Fat, Vegetable Oils and Oleomargarine, J. Nutrition 26: 601 (December) 1943.

5 Deuel, H. J., Jr.: Movitt. E.; Hallman, L. F., and Mattson, F. Studies of the Comparative Nutritive Value of Fats: I. Growth Rate and Efficiency of Conversion of Various Diets to Tissue, J. Nutrition 27: 107 (January) 1944.

The Comparative Nutritional Value of Butter and Oleomargarine, report of Council on Foods and Nutrition, J. A. M. A. 119: 1425 August 22, 1942.

Graves, L. Fats in Our Daily Fare, Mod. Hosp. 60: 90 March 1943.

8 Bloor, W. R. Role of Fat in the Diet, J. A. M. A. 119: 1018, July 25, 1942.

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