Food as the First Priority

The White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health was going to be different from other Government-sponsored meetings in the past, promised Richard Nixon. This time, he said, there would be action, not just talk. But many of the 3,000 delegates gathered last week in Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel were not convinced. With its 26 study groups, eight task forces and diffuse agenda, the massive meeting lacked coherence. The urgency and anger felt by the representatives of the poor often seemed in danger of drowning in a sea of professional expertise. Yet out of the potential chaos came a clear-cut demand to end hunger now, which the Administration and Congress should find difficult to ignore.

"There is a hunger and malnutrition emergency in this country today," resolved the conference. "Therefore, the President must immediately declare that a national hunger emergency exists and, under existing authority, must now free funds and implement programs to feed all hungry Americans this winter." After sounding that clarion for the immediate future, the conference went on to insist that "the overriding remedy for hunger and malnutrition is a minimum guaranteed adequate cash income with a floor of $5,500 annually (for a family of four).1' The delegates also called for expansion and reform of existing food programs; the creation of a plan to provide all schoolchildren with a free, nutritious breakfast and lunch; and the transfer of existing food programs from the Agriculture Department to Health, Education and Welfare--and local administration of all these operations by the poor.

Vast Gulf. In developing these priorities, the delegates demonstrated an amazing ability to cut through rhetoric to cruel reality: there are an estimated 15 million underfed Americans. In fact, the consensus statement seemed almost a victory over the conference format itself, which was encumbered with such panel topics as "Nutrition Teaching in Elementary and High Schools," and "Adults in an Affluent Society."

The President, in his keynote address to the delegates, professed total commitment to eliminating hunger. He said: "On May 6, I asserted to the Congress that 'the moment is at hand to put an end to hunger in America itself for all time.' Speaking for this Administration, I not only accept that responsibility, I claim the responsibility." In the same speech, however, Nixon betrayed a certain insensitivity in an anecdote that unwittingly underlined the vast gulf between the affluent and the hungry in America. Once when he went on a diet, Nixon told the meeting, "the doctor had told me to eat cottage cheese. The difficulty is that I don't like cottage cheese. I took his advice, but I put catsup on it." The catsup story did not go down well with the poor, whose problem is not dieting. Ralph D. Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, later railed: "I lived with people who couldn't afford cottage cheese or catsup."

Mastering Moynihan. By the second day of the conference, the poor felt increasingly out of touch with the rest of the delegates, many of whom were busy talking about topics only peripherally related to hunger. Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi civil rights leader, walked into a panel discussing legalized abortion and roared: "What the hell has that got to do with feeding hungry people?" As a result of their disaffection, the representatives of the poor held a separate session of their own.

That meeting appeased some of the delegates. However, it was Conference Chairman Dr. Jean Mayer's persuasive politicking in various panel caucuses that led to the ultimate statement of priorities. The debate on what those priorities should be exposed a basic difference of opinion within the Nixon Administration on remedying poverty and hunger. On one side was Counselor to the President Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had developed the Nixon income-support program. That program, Moynihan feared, might be endangered if emphasis on food-distribution reform led to congressional wrangling over funds. Thus Moynihan wanted a guaranteed annual income proposal to get top priority. On the other side, Dr. Jean Mayer wanted the emergency-food resolution to take precedence. In the struggle to corral delegates, Mayer mastered Moynihan.

Charming and Caustic. For Mayer (pronounced My-air) it was an important victory. The conference has clearly advised the President that his first obligation must be to feed the hungry and, only after that is done, to work at achieving an income-maintenance program.

Mayer, 49, is accustomed to battles --and winning. He visited America in 1939 with his father, who headed a French medical and scientific mission to the U.S. When war broke out in Europe, Mayer joined the Free French forces and served as an officer for three years (1942-1945), winning 14 decorations. After the war, he returned to the U.S. to become an American citizen and to study physiological chemistry at Yale. In 1950 he became a professor of nutrition and public health at Harvard. Alternately charming and caustic, Mayer has proved his political capabilities in the few months that he has spent in Washington as the President's chief adviser on hunger and in organizing last week's conference. Encouraged by the outcome of the meeting, Mayer said, "It has dramatized hunger and poverty for the press, for the Congress, for the readers of newspapers, for professional people in the health services and social agencies, for the farmers and for industry."

Perhaps so, but at week's end the ultimate effect that the conference would have on presidential action was in doubt. A group of conference members met with the President and announced that although Nixon did not seem prepared to declare a national hunger emergency, he had promised rapid action to help ease the crisis. Moynihan disputed this report. On the contrary, he argued, the President had not committed himself to further antihunger measures. Moynihan contended that the Administration would most likely stand by current antihunger proposals and would strive to begin food-stamp programs in 307 counties in the U.S. that do not now have them.

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