ket, and so far as the governments are concerned unless there is pressure, then there is no need to act.

However, I believe that the introduction of a decimal system for our money and, possibly, the metric system for weights and measures, will not be too long delayed in Britain. I certainly feel that in Britain we are perhaps nearer to the adoption of the metric system than you are here in the United States.

On the question of the decimal fractions of the pound and particularly the hundredths of a pound, there is a movement in Britain today to get around to units of 10's. All of our factory weighing machines are in units of 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 pounds, as opposed to the stones, hundredweights, and so on. Therefore, I imagine that development toward the hundredth of a pound is only a short step away.

I cannot speak for the Board of Trade, because, in Britain, it is our Board of Trade that examines and approves all weighing and measuring devices for use in trade. Mr. Allen, you will have to approach the Board of Trade and sound them out about the adoption of hundredths of a pound on what we term self-indicating scales. Personally I see no reason why hundredths of a pound should not be used.

MR. MCCARTHY: I have one more question, Mr. Gray. In your paper you stated that an extension of the requirement that certain. foods be packaged in specified weights had been recommended and that additional items be added. It is my understanding that a number of amendments have been offered to your new weights and measures bill. Also, if some that have been proposed are adopted, it will result in certain foods that are now required to be packed at specific weights being removed from this list. Would you care to comment on that?

MR. GRAY: I have been away from home for over a fortnight. Anything could have happened in my absence. However, I have no knowledge of anything during the passage of the bill that would alter the range of food items required to be sold by net weight or in specified weights, as these were listed in the original draft of the bill. I don't think that, at this stage in the passage of the bill, the government would accept an amendment of this kind.

I think what the Chairman is referring to is one part in my paper where I say that the Departmental Committee also recommended an extension of the requirements to pack foods in specified weights and I comment: "This recommendation has not been followed and in certain cases foods which are required to be sold in specified quantities have been removed from the list." That is perfectly true. They have removed certain of the foods in the existing list in the Sale of Food Act of 1926, from the group of articles which will be required to be sold in specified weights under the new bill. However, they have added a great many others which hitherto have not been required to be sold in specified weights. So the new list is, in fact, greater than the old.

MR. ROBERT WILLIAMS: Mr. Gray, in your talk, you mentioned that some items are permitted to be sold by gross weight. Is this a requirement and does it prohibit sale by net weight? If so, does this apply to an over-the-counter sale also, or is it limited to prepackaged items?

MR. GRAY: First, if gross weight is sold, then the package should be marked to indicate gross weight. Sale by net weight is not prohibited, however. In the same manner, if a sale is by net weight, this should be so indicated. If a package is marked gross weight, any

inspector is then free to check the wrapper weight to assure that it does not exceed the limits prescribed. If the wrapper weight is exceeded the article should have been sold by net weight and an offense has been committed.

Secondly, in weighing over the counter, in respect of these foods which are permitted to be sold gross weight, the trader may include the wrapper weight without marking the weight statement on the wrapper.

What is done, in effect, in respect of certain goods for sale over the counter to the purchaser, is to include these wrapper weights, provided they don't exceed the limits prescribed.

MR. JACKSON: Mr. Gray, I wonder if you would state again to what extent your law specifically goes into the question of moisture content. MR. GRAY: The weights and measures law does not deal with moisture content in foods. The British courts have held, in respect to commodities such as bread, that no evaporation allowance is permitted, that the loaf of bread must be of the correct weight at the time it is sold, not merely at the time of baking.

With respect of solid fuel, we sell tremendous quantities of processed fuel. Coke and other types of processed fuel can absorb vast amounts of moisture, if they are subjected to certain atmospheric conditions or, possibly, by standing in stockpile over the winter. To deal with this not strictly as a weights and measures matter but as a consumer protection problem, and largely because the retailers of processed fuels complain about it, the processors of these fuels have agreed, under British standards, to a specification of a maximum of 9 percent moisture in coke. Therefore, when coke is sold by the processor to the retail distributor, it must be sold with no more than 9 percent moisture with a limiting value of 12 percent for individual determinations. This does not apply to the sale by the retailer to the purchaser, however, because the specification is not extended to retail sales.

A special committee is sitting at the present time with a view to investigating the problem, to see whether a specification can be agreed upon for retail sales. We have had many cases of excessive quantities of moisture in items such as coke. I have had one example with as much as 38 percent moisture and successful prosecutions have been taken in respect to a false trade description applied to such coke. I don't know that this answers the question fully, but our law does nothing about moisture contents of commodities, other than that which I have described to you.

MR. MCCARTHY: Thank you, Mr. Gray for your very interesting address, and I wish to compliment you upon the informative answers which you have given in response to our questions.

May I suggest that the Conference tender to Mr. Gray a rising vote of thanks for his interesting talk and his patience in answering our many questions.

THE PACKAGER'S VIEWPOINT ON TRUTH IN PACKAGING

By LLOYD STOUFFER, Editor, Modern Packaging Magazine

My purpose here is to interpret, as best I can, the packager's viewpoint toward Senator Hart's "Truth in Packaging" Bill and other prospective packaging regulations. You are not likely to find unanimous agreement in a complex of industry so vast that it covers thousands of companies in more than 100 different product fields producing

more than 250 billion packages at a cost of close to $25 billion a year. But someone has to speak. As to my qualifications, I can only say that, as Editor of Modern Packaging for almost 20 years, it has been my business to find out what packagers think, what they want to know, how they propose to act. For two years now, it has been my special purpose to report to packagers the growing controversy over the Hart Bill and other regulatory proposals, and to relay back from them their thoughts as to the merits of these proposals.

In view of the fact that packagers have taken a public position almost solidly alined against the Hart Bill, it may surprise you if I say that most of them see some good in it, and that almost all, in my opinion, would welcome simple, explicit, uniform ground rules to assure fair practice by all. But what would be simple, explicit, uniform, and assuring? Certainly not the Hart Bill as it now stands. It goes much too far and is much too vague. Although I understand that there have been some changes in the bill as approved by the subcommittee just last week, there is still the fear that it is going to leave vital packaging questions up to administrative interpretation without specific legislative authority and without provision for adequate judicial review.

But the Hart Bill as we see it offers no improvement over existing packaging regulation because it has the same basic fault-it does not adequately define the rule it seeks to enforce, and without adequate definition of legislative intent, enforcement of the law is powerless, as our courts have many times made clear. The Hart Bill as it stands would have an effect quite opposite to its stated purposes. Instead of protecting the consumer, it would cost him money. Far from being an antitrust measure- (what a deceptive label that is!)—it would breed monopoly by restricting competition and freedom of choice. Unless the Hart Bill is radically changed and drastically simplified, beyond its present status, I can assure you that packaging companies will fight it with all their strength.

The fight has already been hot and heavy, and what we need now is more light and less heat. Perhaps a reasonable solution would have been found long before this had not the Senate hearings been launched on a note that was guaranteed to create angry resentment in every packaging man.

When Senator Hart started off by referring to packagers, literally, as "pickpockets"; when his committee gave the floor and the headlines to the type of consumer agitator who is convinced that all business is engaged in a conspiracy to cheat the consumer-he did not exactly establish a climate for reasonable cooperation. For that reason, if no other, I think that anything called the Hart Bill will always be an anathema to packaging people and that, if a solution is to be found, it had better be through some other medium.

The professional zealots alone held the floor at the first sessions of the Hart Committee hearings in 1961. Television screens and newspaper headlines across the country repeated their one-sided, misguided, and misinformed testimony. I have a stack of newspaper clippings from this period with headlines such as these: "MODERN HOUSEWIVES ARE FREQUENT VICTIMS OF PACKAGING TRICKERY" and "CHEAT WAVE HITS NATION."

Packaging people who could readily expose the gross exaggeration in these charges and explain the reasons for certain misconceptions

were barred from these initial hearings and, by the time they did get to the microphones some time later, the press and TV had tired of the story and gone away. The defendant in this case has never yet had his day in the court of public opinion.

When I protested the one-sided nature of the program, before the first hearings opened in June 1961, I was told that the committee wished first to get on the record the "consumer's side" of the story, and that packagers could appear later. I pleaded that the first session should not be closed without at least one explanatory statement on behalf of packagers. I volunteered to appear. I was not allowed to appear, but a statement which I had prepared was, at the last moment, accepted for the record-but not read. Hence, it did not figure in the day's stories.

You, as regulatory officials dealing with packagers, would agree, I think, that my statement was truthful. I can assure you that it does summarize the industry viewpoint. In it, I said, in part:

The phrase "deceptive packaging" can be interpreted in almost any way. Packaging and labeling have been operating for years in a legal vacuum, because of lack of definition of this and other terms. Lacking a clearly defined standard to which all could adhere, it is entirely possible that, in the heat of competition, some packagers have slipped into practices which in the most extreme interpretation of the word could be called "deceptive."

No packager, except a stupid one, would be intentionally dishonest. But like all business men in our competitive, free-enterprise system, a packager will go as far as the law allows in meeting competition. The trouble here is that there has been no law and no rule that will say: "This is deceptive; this is not."

The consumer complaints you (the committee) are hearing are, I am sure, based not on dishonesty of the package, but on failure to understand certain technical limitations and requirements of packaging and merchandising, and, in the final analysis, on failure to read the label. For labels must, by law effective in every State in this Union, honestly state the weight, volume, or quantity of contents, or else the merchandise is subject to seizure and the packager to heavy penalties under the law. This happens rarely, and only then, you can be sure, because of some mechanical malfunction in weighing or filling.

If the average conscientious packager can be criticized on any point, it is that the contents statement is often relegated to small type on the back side of the package. Here, the packager is following a design trend and following the practice of his competitors. If a standard were fixed by law, requiring that the contents statement appear in type of a specified size at a specified position on the package, giving all packagers an equal standard, I am sure all would cooperate.

In the months that have passed since this statement was made, I have become more than ever convinced that the real nub of the matter is in that matter of clearly specified contents statements. How can any package be dishonest or deceitful if a true statement of the content appears so that it can be easily read, in an expectable position on the

package? With the important exception that it does not specify legibility and position, this requirement already appears in the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and in other laws applying to packaging. (You know, of course, that soaps were from the beginning ruled exempt from the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and are, therefore, not required by Federal law to state the weight of contents. It is interesting that the soap companies are the most insistent that there be no change in the law and have been instrumental in spiking several moves within the packaging field to make constructive suggestions on the Hart Bill.)

I sincerely believe that 95 percent of all consumer complaints about deceptive packaging could be met to every reasonable degree if there were a simple, enforceable, legal standard, applicable to all consumer products across the board, spelling out size of type to be used for the contents statement and its position on the package or label. It is just as simple as that. But the Hart Bill does not do it. It says something about evolving type standards in the future-but no one knows what they will be. And the many other provisions that the bill does make are, to my mind, trivial in comparison to this one which it lacks. How, I ask you, can any consumer claim to have been deceived by the shape or size, or any other feature of a package, if a truthful figure as to the amount of contents is there and she has read it? We cannot expect to provide for someone who cannot or will not read. It seems to me that Consumer Reports, which has led the hue and cry against what it calls deceitful packaging, would be better advised to teach its readers how to read a label. After all, its subscribers are presumably the most intelligent of shoppers, and they know how to read.

I am glad to see that the National Conference of Weights and Measures is well ahead of the Hart Committee in its understanding of what is needed on this score. The report of the Committee on Laws and Regulations does precisely what I have recommended in defining prominence, placement, and legibility. It logically defines "principal display panel," which is a much better term than "front" or "main" panel. I was pleased to see that in the Committee's preliminary report, last year, it further specified type size for the declaration of net quantity of contents, which would be required to appear on the principal display panel in relation to the size of that panel, which is the logical way to do it. It gave a range of relative sizes for contents type through seven stages, ranging from 16 inch on areas of 15 square inches or less, up to one inch for areas of more than 480 square inches. As you probably know, a similar regulation for foods and drugs was adopted in Canada two or three years ago, and from all reports it is working well. This specification has been withheld in this year's report but only for further study and refinement with industry's advice.

So the National Conference on Weights and Measures is taking the view that this improvement-and others can best be effected in this country through existing regulatory agencies, with industry cooperation and agreement, and with the final enforcement at State level. Nowhere in the final report to the 47th Conference, or in this year's tentative report to the 48th Conference, do I find even a mention of the Hart Bill.

Packagers certainly will welcome more positive guidance. But the Food and Drug Administration apparently does not share the view that it already has ample legislative authority to do this. I under