89 



3 



stature of the Japanese has changed since American wheat began to be included in their diet about 



40 years ago, we could accomplish some long term market development with those children in the 

 Children's Assistance Program. 



The cost of the "food* part of the program would be relatively small, but it would be an integral 

 ingredient in a package which would come as close to assuring totally healthy children as possible. 

 This package would be labor intensive in its application, however. Management, supervision and 

 training would be critical. But if we care it could be done. 



Enough knowledge alreacfy exists among specialists in our country to make the right approaches to 

 the Russians and to initiate this program. Children's specialists and nutrition experts were among 

 the many 'survey teams* that visited Russia last year. Certainly the need for still another team of 

 American experts 'assessing the situation" is not called for. 



Institutions, not only orphanages, but schools and kindergartens and day care centers (detsche sad) 

 provide the sites where the program could be administered. And this could be a very important 

 feature of the program - where it would be sited - because as individuals try their hand at private 

 farming, or other types of private enterprise, they are cut off from the collective or state farm or 

 factory and left to fend for themselves and their families. In rural area this is terribly important, 

 because it is at the farm center where the school, the polyclinic and health care facilities are located. 

 This subtle, yet very powerful, stranglehold by a farm chairman or director could not only be broken 

 by the Children's Assistance Program package but not so subtly be used to help promote private 

 endeavor. It is not hard to imagine how democracy and progress toward free markets could benefit. 



