424 



Mr. Rogers. Do I understand you to say you are buying now- 



Mr. Waters. We have offered to buy up to $1 million worth of prod- 

 ucts this year, blended into a formulated product similar to the prod- 

 ucts we are now using from the Department of Agriculture. We ar& 

 working out the final arrangements for how this will be carried to the 

 trade and the chairman has asked that he be kept fully informed on this. 

 When we reach our agreement, we will do that. We are offering to buy 

 before we have the product available because we feel that is the only 

 way we will get industry to start producing, but w^e are going to offer 

 that as an inducement to industry in this country. 



Hov/ever ; again, I emphasize that we are trying to build a market ; 

 establish a distribution channel and create a market, but the question 

 of how fast the pilot plants can move and how fast industry can 

 move, these are really other peoples' decisions and not really ours. 

 I think our emphasis on it and our willingness to introduce it in our 

 food programs, and our effort to encourage acceptability overseas, 

 will be a major inducement to the industry in this country. 



Mr. Rogers. I would agree with you. I think it is essential to get 

 this industry started and moving. 



To follow up my colleague's statement, I also think that anything 

 that can be done to encourage our own fishing fleets to become modern- 

 ized should tie in with this program of helping and also bringing 

 dollars to this country. Certainly Russia is fishing the seas of the- 

 world, and they are going to start moving south now. They have al- 

 ready, of course, been fishing along our northern coasts, and they are 

 now starting to move south. I think we will find them fishing all of 

 the Caribbean and South America, and, of course, they will try to sell 

 their products there just as they have in Africa. And this would take 

 markets away from our own people if we don't develop our capacities 

 to do this. 



I commend you for your interest. I would hope that you would give 

 increased emphasis to this whole area in your program and as the 

 chairman has stated, the present emphasis of some 320,00p seems rather- 

 insignificant in comparison to the contribution that this could make 

 and fit in with the economies of those nations. 



Thank j^ou. 



Mr. Drew^ry. Mr. Waters, in connection with the question Mr. Pelly 

 was raising with regard to the aid to development of fisheries in other 

 countries, that we are sort of clobbering ourselves, you mentioned that 

 it was something over which AID had no control. I believe you said 

 AID can't do it alone. However, as chairman of the Food From ther 

 Sea Committee of the Council which has a membership frorn BCF, 

 and others I am sure, why couldn't your committee do coordination 

 in that area where these friction points arise ? Couldn't you say, "All 

 right, we need help in this direction." Couldn't you perform some 

 coordination through this committee mechanism ? 



Mr. Waters. This is a good suggestion, Mr. Drewry, and I would 

 be glad to put that on the agenda of one of our next Food From the Sea 

 meetings. 



The makeup of that Committee includes AID, the Office of Science 

 and Technology, the Smithsonian Institution, the Council of Economic 

 Advisers, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the 

 State Department, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. 



