The roots of the Nutrition Committee lie in the "discovery" of widespread hunger in the United States in the mid-60s. A documentary called "Hunger in America," aired May 1968 on CBS-TV, shocked the American people. They were shocked to find that millions of people in the United States never got enough food to eat and that their government was doing very little to alleviate the problem. The documentary was aired after the publication of a report by the Citizens' board of Inquiry in Hunger and Malnutrition in the U.S.

The members of the board were in no way ready for what they found. In their words they "had been lulled into the comforting belief that at least the extremes of privation had been eliminated in the process of becoming the world's wealthiest nation." They presumed to be true Michael Harrington's statement in opening his book The Other America: "To be sure, the other America is not impoverished in the same sense as those poor nations where millions cling to hunger as a defense against starvation. This country has escaped such extremes." But Harrington was wrong.

In 1968 the Senate reacted to its own, as well as to the nation's, sense of shock; that year, George McGovern introduced S. Res. 281 to create a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. On July 30, 1968, the resolution was brought to the Senate floor by Sen. Joseph Clark (D.-Pa.) from the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare with the committee's recommendation in favor of creating the Select Committee. The resolution passed by voice vote.

The resolution in many ways was an admission of failure from the Senate on the part of the Congress and the Administration--a failure "to banish starvation and want for necessities among desperately disadvantaged poor within our Nation." One of the obstacles noted was "division of responsibility and authority within Congress," i.e., whenever responsibility is unclearly divided it is avoided by all parties. What is implicit in the resolution and how it was handled was that the Agriculture Committee, which had legislative and oversight authority for federal food programs, had not done its job. This implicit fault was highlighted by the fact that the legislative committee that released S. Res. 281 was Labor and Public Welfare, not Agriculture, and by the fact that the subcommittee that investigated hunger in the summer of 1967 was from Labor and Public Welfare and not Agriculture.

Rather than more clearly defining responsibility for fighting hunger--which would have involved more finger-pointing than is usually allowed in the Senate--it was decided that a new committee, independent of any of the others, be created to fill the gap. This positive action showed the Senate recognized that nutrition policy is an integral part of food and agriculture policy as well as health and public welfare policy. This interdisciplinary approach has been a hallmark of the select committee since then.

The new committee was charged to report within 11 months to the appropriate legislative committees after studying "the food and other related basic needs among the people of the United States." The committee was asked to make "such recommendations as the Committee finds necessary to establish a coordinated program or programs which will assure every United States resident adequate food, medical assistance, and other related basic necessities of life and health." Clearly such a program has not yet been implemented. One might infer that Nutrition has not done its job and ought to pack up and go home. Unfortunately, the lofty goals set forth for the select committee have never truly been accepted by the entire Senate. Nutrition has done a great deal to improve the food situation since 1968; if the battle has been lost, the lack of commitment in the Agriculture Committee and the whole Senate to eliminating hunger and poverty has lost it.

Among the achievements directly or indirectly attributable to the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs are:

Food Stamps: The program is now reaching far more people than in 1968. One of the most important recommendations regarding food stamps in 1968, a proposal eliminating the requirement that participants buy their stamps, was not approved in Congress until this year. The poorest eligible participants are now able to take advantage of the program. The committee had been pushing for this for years and provided a continuing source of information and support on food stamp issues--information that was unavailable anywhere else in Congress. Another major improvement that developed over the years is standardized eligibility criteria and benefits. The committee is still working to facilitate participation by the rural poor, who often have difficulty travelling the great distances to welfare offices.

School Food Programs: In 1968 the bulk of school lunch programs were concentrated in suburban school districts. The suburban districts needed the programs less than poor ghetto and rural districts, but they had the money to set up the facilities. Since 1968, a good deal of money has been allocated nationally to establish food service facilities in the poorest school districts, so there is now a much greater potential for reaching the most needy children with free or reduced-price meals. (The remaining problem concerns the palatability of the food, a problem which Nutrition is now working on.) Also, since 1968 the School Breakfast Program has been established and the Special Milk Program expanded.

Maternal, Child, and Infant Nutrition: By establishing the Special Supplemental Food

Matthew D. Slater '78-3 worked as staff member on the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs from September, 1976 through August, 1977. Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Congress recognized the critical role of nutrition in the safe delivery and healthy development of children. WIC was established in 1972 on a pilot basis, and made a national program in 1975. (Humphrey and the committee created the WIC legislation.) Only after pressure by the committee and subsequent court decisions did the Department of Agriculture begin to implement the program properly; the program still does not nearly reach all potential recipients. Next year, WIC's authorization expires, and input by the Nutrition Committee will be critical to the future existence and growth of coverage of WIC.

Nutrition Education: Although one of the areas that Sen. Clark outlined for the select committee was the need for nutrition education, the committee was unable until this year to get any kind of meaningful nutrition education program through the Senate.

In addition to overseeing the areas sketched above--a full-time job in itself--the committee has much more to do in the future. First, there is continued follow-up on its series of hearings on Diet and Disease. In the course of these hearings the committee found that poor diet--both under- and over-consumption--contributes to six ot the ten leading fatal diseases in this country. As a first attack on this problem, the committee published in January of this year a report entitled Dietary Goals for the United States. It outlined recommendations for action by government, industry, and private citizens. Follow-up in this area will be critical in helping reduce the incidence of these diseases. (The nature of the recommendations make it probable that political factors would have prevented Agriculture from ever having published the report.)

The committee has long been an advocate of using good nutritional practices to improve health. One preventive health measure that the Committee has been fighting to get passed for over two years is the National Meals-on-Wheels Program. This program would fund non-profit organizations which provide one free hot meal a day to homebound elderly or disabled individuals who could not otherwise get a hot meal in their homes. So far the Subcommittee on Aging, which has jurisdiction, has refused to even hold hearings on the Meals-on-Wheels bill. Furthermore, the committee has been forced by politics to write the bill in a way which precludes it from reaching the neediest eligible participants. Preference for funding would go to organizations with volunteer labor. Such organizations are much more prevalent in middle- and upper-income areas, where people can afford to volunteer their time. In ghetto areas, few people have time to volunteer, and few suburbanites are willing to volunteer for ghetto work. Yet ghettos are the areas where needs for the program are greatest.

These are the sorts of problems that the committee has had throughout its lifetime. One shudders to think of what state this country would be in if the committee had never existed.

Needless to say, the committee is not perfect, nor are the programs it has helped to produce. Indeed, the programs are for the most part band-aid measures and are not long-run solutions to the country's income distribution problems. Unfortunately, right now such measures are the only game in town and the Select Committee on Nutrition is the best player we have. It is the only body in the Senate with a real commitment to improving the lot of poor people in this country. For those who do not feel this goal is important, the Litany of Hunger written by the Citizen's Board may cause a conversion:

That is the litany--heard wherever we went...joined by countless and faceless voices, heard by us and by others, and always the refrain is the same:

No food, no meat, no milk--and the children go to bed hungry. Sometimes they cry.

Sometimes I cry, too, but I guess with shame, not hunger. I urge you to send a telegram or mailgram to your senators (address: U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510), asking them to support S. Res. 264 and a two-year reauthorization of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. Please