velopments and be prepared to participate for the good of man- 

 kind, as well as for the future of our industry. Remember, we 

 live in a satellite-encircled planet of which only three-tenths is 

 land and, of that three-tenths, only one-tenth is cultivated. 

 Seven-tenths of our earthly planet is water and our industry 

 ^ets its raw materials from the greater potential in this world. 



Now, I would like to direct our thoughts to another aspect 

 of the increasing problems that face our industry — that of the 

 well developed countries such as the U.S.A. These problems, 

 as I see them, are based on the fact that each American con- 

 sumes, on the average, about 2,500 calories per day, total. 

 This represents about 91 2,500 calories per year. Now, he may- 

 be able to purchase and use 3 television sets, 3 cars, 4 cameras, 

 6 suits per year but, in terms of foods, he can only utilize 2,500 

 calories. 



The entire food industry must compete for these 912,500 

 calories annually. At 10 lbs. per capita annual consumption 

 of fish, this represents only 5-10,000 calories! About 1%!! 

 We, as an industry, must compete better. We must capture 

 more of the food dollars. We can do this only at the expense 

 of another segment of the industry. And ... we had better 

 compete more successfullv in order to survive. We can do 

 this by : 



a) Improving our present products 



b) Developing new products and processes 



c) Controlling and reducing labor costs 



d) Recognizing the market of convenience 



I firmly believe that, as an industry, we must not rest 

 on our laurels. We do have some poor products in the market- 

 place today and we should recognize the fact and improve 

 these. We will be judged in the marketplace, usually, by the 

 poorest quality products, at the very best, by the average of 

 the industry, and never by the best products. Thus, we must 

 upgrade the products now being produced by our industry 

 in order to try to get more of the consumers' food dollars. 



I also firmly believe that we must become increasingly more 

 imaginative and creative in our efforts to get the consumer to 

 purchase more seafood products. Creativity is a phenomenon 

 peculiar to man of all the animals. Our sister industries of 

 steel, electronics, aerodynamics, etc., have put a tremendous 

 premium on creative thinking. We must do the same. We 

 are in a highly competitive economy in the food industry. 

 Daily, new products appear and old ones disappear. We, too, 

 must find ways of creating new products, of developing new 

 processes to achieve better quality products at lower prices to 

 the consumer. We must snap up each morsel of discovery of 

 the scientist and transform this, whenever practical, to our own 

 industry and its products. 



Perhaps the three best examples I can cite relate to irradia- 

 tion of seafoods, freezing with liquid nitrogen and freeze-drying. 

 Now, I am not advocating that each of you should go out and 

 sell your mechanical refrigeration plants or junk your canning 

 lines. Rather, I am suggesting that we all take a cold hard 

 look at each of these methods and dream of what each could 

 do for our businesses. This is creative thinking and is one of 

 our most vital resources. We depend on it for our industrial 

 advancement. It is a mercurial and ephemeral disposition of 



the mind — it is virtually impossible to measure quantitatively, 

 and the best we can do is count the evaluation of new, basic 

 concepts to apply these technological advances. I have cited 

 three. I do not expect these to replace canning or freezing 

 preservation of marine products. But, I do believe that ea< h 

 of these processes has certain inherent characteristics that we 

 can and should utilize. 



Irradiation can destroy bacteria and can extend the refriger- 

 ated storage life of marine products. Let us look at this phe- 

 nomenon objectively and pursue it to see whether it will pro- 

 vide better fish products for consumers in certain parts of the 

 interior of this country, and whether it will do it at an economi- 

 cal price. Let us study it in the light of our own deep knowl- 

 edge of our own industry and our own businesses. 



We know that lyophilisation, or freeze dehydration, too, can 

 produce certain kinds of products. Let us determine whether 

 this can fulfill a consumer demand with excellent profit to our 

 industry. We know that liquid nitrogen does modify the struc- 

 ture of foods by the rapid rate of cooling. Can this produce 

 products not possible by normal means? What are the costs? 



I believe that our industry spends little enough on true re- 

 search. Oh, I know, we all say we have research budgets, but 

 into these we throw quality-control, firefighting, etc. What we 

 really have is "science of emergency." At the very least, let 

 us spend a little money and evaluate carefully the developments 

 made possible by the research effort of others. This we owe 

 to our stockholders, much less than to the public. 



I am sure that the success of our industry in the future is 

 to a large extent dependent on our ability to alleviate increases 

 in labor costs. 



It is obvious that, in order to decrease labor costs, we must 

 increase production efficiency. This is an absolute necessity 

 if we are to maintain the present level of consumption of our 

 products, much less to increase the utilization of the "fruit 

 de mer." 



The sixty-four dollar question for all of us is "how to achieve 

 this?" Now, I believe that our industry has shown, by the 

 actual history of consumer prices of seafoods, that in spite of 

 labor increases we have been able to maintain only modest 

 increases in prices of our products in the marketplace. This 

 has been done only through automation and production effi- 

 ciency achieved through design and construction of new effi- 

 cient equipment which can reduce labor costs, reduce losses, 

 increase production efficiency and improve product quality. 

 Were any one of the companies represented here as efficient in 

 their production practices 10 years ago as they are now, we 

 would have been making barrels of dollars then. 



It has been said that "those who ignore history are doomed 

 to repeat it." Thus, I say to you, look at the future as a mirror 

 reflection of the past. Look to more automation as a means 

 of maintaining price levels. Let us, too, look at computer tech- 

 nology as a means not only of inventory control and billing, but 

 production control as well. As I gaze in the crystal ball I can- 

 not but see the aggressive part of our industry running their 

 production lines with computers. Automated filling and dis- 

 pensing equipment controlled by computers will be used to 

 make fish products with uniform formulation, texture, color and 



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