Speaking for their industry, John G. Giumarra, Jr., and Anthony A. Bianco, Jr., said Chevez' pesticide campaign and his charge that California growers are poisoning the American people would be totally repudiated in testimony today and tomorrow before the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. The growers, as well as officials of the State of California and technical experts on agricultural pesticides, are in Washington to appear before the Subcommittee.

Giumarra, general counsel for Giumarra Vineyards Corporation of Edison, and Bianco, president of Bianco Fruit Corporation of Fresno, issued this statement at a news conference at the National Press Club:

"It is somewhat unusual in advance of a legislative hearing to comment on testimony the committee will hear. But we of the table grape industry have had to listen for too long while Cesar Chavez has misled the American people and the Congress.

"Mr. Chavez has come to Washington to testify before the highest legislative body in the land in an effort to use this revered place as the staging ground for a traveling sideshow which he had hoped would whip the farmers and stores of the nation to their knees.

"Mr. Chavez and his representatives have appeared before Congress and in the marketplaces of the country to charge that California table grapes are contaminated by pesticides. The hearings today and tomorrow will prove that those charges are false, and that they have been deliberately raised as a tactical weapon in a losing battle.

"They will prove that Mr. Chavez is the greatest threat to the American consumer in the history of agriculture and his pious trumpeting of the pesticide charge will be shown for what it is a bogeyman campaign to keep his failing 'La Causa' alive.

"On August 1, the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor heard Jerome Cohen, UFWOC general counsel, charge that Mr. Bianco's grapes contained 18 parts per million of the pesticide aldrin, a level far in excess of permitted tolerances. His charge was based on a laboratory analysis purporting to be of Mr. Bianco's grapes purchased in a Washington store. Then, with a broad brush but no specifics, he painted a black picture of growers poisoning farm workers and the American consumer.

"Senator George Murphy of California then questioned Mr. Cohen's charges, pointing out that government and private investigations of grapes and their purity failed to substantiate Mr. Cohen's claims. Senator Murphy called Mr. Cohen's testimony 'possible duplicity' and asked that the hearings be reconvened to get at the facts.

"The hearings today and tomorrow will clearly establish those facts. Spokesmen for the table grape industry, chemical manufacturers and federal and state agencies will appear before the committee. Their testimony will pin the 'big lie' label on the UFWOC pesticide campaign.

"Evidence will show that Mr. Cohen's charge is false because aldrin is not even used on grapes in California.

"Evidence will show that UFWOC launched the pesticide scare only to shore up its sagging boycott and that its stated concern for the farm worker and consumer is no more than another cynical weapon in its arsenal of trickery and deceit.

"Evidence will be presented that Mr. Chavez himself opposed launching the poison scare until all else failed, and that UFWOC was willing to use the pesticide charge as a throw-away issue at the bargaining table.

"The Subcommittee will also hear of harassment and terror on the farms, of firebombings and arson, and of the mysterious spraying of a tear gas type chemical in an effort to force workers from the field.

"And when the evidence is in, we think the script of Mr. Chavez' travelling sideshow which will roam the East and Midwest over the next few weeks will have to be rewritten.

It will have to be rewritten because Mr. Chavez has failed in his last desperate attempt to grab control of the nation's food production. California table grapes are being harvested, shipped and marketed and the American public is buying them. UFWOC has failed to stop the consumer from exercising his freedom of choice in the market place just as it has failed to stop the farm worker from going into the vineyards.

"It is about time that if Mr. Chavez and UFWOC really wanted to help the farm worker that they join with responsible agriculture, with members of

Congress and with concerned consumers in seeking federal legislation to provide orderly procedures for union organizing and collective bargaining on the farm. If he believed in consumers' rights he would call off his boycott and respect their right to decide for themselves what they wish to buy or not to buy.

"Agriculture across the country is supporting fair and responsible legislation while Mr. Chavez has only said 'no' to every proposal. Instead of using the Congress for a sideshow, it it time for Mr. Chavez and UFWOC to partake in the democratic process and work with all concerned to achieve a real solution to the farm labor controversy."

Senator MONDALE. I would like to see this be a rational hearing on the exposure of farm workers to pesticide poisoning. That is how it all began, but since two things were said, one that the farm workers were sponsoring deceitful information, and secondly, that by implication that this committee was sponsoring the same sort of material, I thought it was important to clear the air.

I would say up to this point we have not heard one hint that the farm workers or Safeway did anything but the honest thing. They took grapes to the laboratory for testing and found aldrin.

you

Senator MURPHY. Pardon me, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday there was a suggestion that there might have been a misreading by the laboratory report by the England laboratories, and now we have heard an expert say that if you do it in a certain fashion could very easily be misleading and come to erroneous conclusions, that unless you do a complete testing with certain instruments which probably were not available or may not have been available in England but were available to the Food and Drug, we have a different scientific opinion here.

Senator MONDALE. That is right, but

Senator MURPHY. Let me finish.

Now there is a difference of opinion between the England Laboratory and the Food and Drug Administration. I merely want to find out if there was aldrin to this degree. That is my only question.

Senator MONDALE. Would you not say that that question is an entirely different one than the question of probing the deceit of the farm workers? In the last statement, you said the laboratories might not know what they are doing.

Senator MURPHY. That is not true. I have not charged anybody with deceit. If I have, if that is the meaning that the Chairman has read in—and I didn't understand that my statement was on trial here in this form and I resent the implication-then if that is the case I make no charge against anyone. I am here to find out whether or not testimony was given to this committee in an effort to deceive the committee, whether it be by England or by Mr. Porter or by the United Farm Workers, or whoever. This is my whole purpose, and I think that is fairly clear.

Senator MONDALE. I received a letter from you on August 19, 1969, requesting these hearings, and in the letter you refer to the FDA and other materials that appear to attempt to mislead the subcommittee by presentation of false evidence.

Now I find that a very serious charge. I don't like to be misled and I am sorry you resent it, but it is your language.

Senator MURPHY. May I say this: This is a personal letter from me to the chairman of the committee. Is that right? Is that what it is?

Senator MONDALE. And it was released to the press, which makes it somewhat public.

(The news release referred to follows:)

NEWS RELEASE FROM THE OFFICE OF SENATOR GEORGE MURPHY, CALIFORNIA

Sacramento, Calif., August 20-Sen. George Murphy, R.-Calif., citing Food and Drug Administration reports refuting Senate testimony that California table grapes contain harmful levels of the pesticide aldrin, called today for a farm union official to repeat his charges under oath.

Murphy has stated that 60 tests of table grapes across the country by the FDA showed no trace of aldrin. He termed the August 1 testimony of Jerome Cohen, general counsel of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, before the Sub-Committee on Migratory Labor "possible duplicity."

The senator said he wrote Sen. Walter F. Mondale, D.-Minn. the Subcommittee chairman yesterday, requesting hearings be reconvened and Cohen and others be questioned under oath.

...

"The conclusion is clear," Murphy said. "The grapes presented (by UFWOC) had somehow achieved strange qualities which I find very difficult to explain. And it seems possible that a Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate has been the victim of duplicity.

"If this be the case the tactic on the part of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee is a vicious type of deceit and makes clear the witness has raised the pesticide question as part of UFWOC's 'rule or ruin' methods. "If duplicity be the case," he said, "it seems to me these people should be cited for contempt of congress."

In his letter to Mondale, Murphy said Cohen, Manuel Vasquez. UFWOC representative in Washington; and FDA representatives and other scientists should be required to give sworn testimony about aldrin content in grapes.

The senator said statements from the agricultural commissioner of Kern County and the operator of the Kern vineyards where the grapes cited by Cohen were produced proved there had been no aldrin application. He said the vineyard operator, Anthony J. Bianco, had not used aldrin in any form on his properties in six years.

Murphy added: "Obviously, the union has raised the pesticide issue in an effort to further harass the grape industry and in furtherance of their design to force the grape growers to force their workers to join a union which they do not wish to join. I believe they have gone too far in this case and that this deplorable story will show the UFWOC effort up for what it really is." Murphy said the pesticide issue pointed up in "clear and concise evidence" the need for federal legislation to resolve farm labor problems.

He said a law growing out of his Senate-introduced Consumers' Agricultural Food Protection Act would "offer the protections for proper organization and collective bargaining, while safeguarding the farmer against loss of his crop and possibly his farm and guaranteeing the flow of food from farm to market.

"This pesticide specter raised by UFWOC is just another argument in favor of such legislation," he said.

The UFWOC pesticide charge was leveled in Cohen's unsworn testimony and claimed table grapes purchased at Washington supermarkets contained 180 times the human tolerance level of aldrin, a chlorinated hydrocarbon used against grasshoppers. Cohen presented a report from the C. W. England Laboratory of Washington, D.C., noting 18 parts per million of aldrin in the grapes tested. Legal limit is .10 parts per million.

The England Laboratory, Murphy told the Senate last week, said the grapes tested were provided by Vasquez, and were not purchased by the laboratory. FDA's 60 tests, showing no trace of aldrin on any sample, included grapes from markets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington-Baltimore and storage lots from San Francisco.

(The allegations referred to also appeared in the Congressional Record of August 12, 1969, which follow :)

[Excerpts from the Congressional Record, Aug. 12, 1969]

ALDRIN RESIDUE ON TABLE GRAPES

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I think it is important that the RECORD show, and the American people be aware of, what seems to be a shocking attempt to mislead the public by the presentation of false evidence to the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor.

On August 1, 1969, Jerry Cohen, general counsel for the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee-UFWOC- appeared before that subcommittee and testified that two bunches of Thompson seedless grapes contained quantities of the chemical Aldrin which were 180 times the established tolerance level for human beings. Mr. Cohen submitted a laboratory report from C. W. England Laboratory, of Washington, D.C., showing an aldrin content of 18 parts per million compared with the legal tolerance level of .01 part per million.

The England Laboratory, in later comments to the news media, said that the grapes they tested had been presented to them by a representative of the UFWOC and were not purchased directly or obtained from any market directly by the laboratory.

After this testimony the Food and Drug Administration, at the request of subcommittee Chairman MONDALE, has conducted tests of table grapes in markets across the country. It obtained 60 samples, including 48 from retail outlets in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Washington-Baltimore area. It also sampled 12 carlots in the San Francisco market.

The Food and Drug Administration report shows there was no Aldrin residue on any grapes. It also shows there was no chemical residue of any nature on any grape sample that approached the human tolerance level. I ask unanimous consent that the report of the Food and Drug Administration be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the report was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

(Material inserted in the RECORD by Senator Murphy appears in full detail earlier in this hearing record.)

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the grapes presented to the England Laboratory were taken there by Manuel Vasquez, the Washington district representative of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. They were purchased, Mr. Cohen said in his testimony, from Safeway Stores in Washington.

Mr. Cohen said the grapes were produced by "Bianco." That would be Anthony A. Bianco, Jr., and Bianco Fruit Corp. of Delano, Arvin, and Thermal. Mr. Bianco has not used aldrin in any form on his properties in the past 6 years. He has filed statements to this effect from his professional pesticide applicator and supplier and from himself.

I ask unanimous consent that the statements of Mr. Bianco and of Mr. Sampson, his pest control applicator, be printed in the RECORD, together with a report of tests conducted on grapes from the Bianco Ranch by the BC Laboratories of Bakersfield, Calif.

There being no objection, the statements were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, Seldon Morley, the Agricultural Commissioner of Kern County, Calif., in which Mr. Bianco does the bulk of his grape production has submitted a statement that there has been no commercial application of Aldrin in any grapes in Kern County. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Morley's statement be printed at this point in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the last grapes shipped by Mr. Bianco from the Coachella Valley were cleared by the Federal FDA Inspector C. R. LewisNo. 319 and went to Texas on July 13. No Coachella Valley grapes could

have retained salable quality until late July when the grapes in question had to be purchased.

-a di

Pesticide chemists have found that aldrin converts very rapidly to the chemical dieldrin appearing within 6 or 7 hours after aldrin application in the fields. Dr. Paul E. Porter, the assistant to the director of physical sciences for the Shell Development Co., biological research center in Modesto, Calif.vision of the only firm manufacturing aldrin-reports it would take an application of 10 to 15 pounds of aldrin per acre to achieve a level of 18 parts per million immediately after spraying. The normal application, as approved by the California Department of Agriculture, is one-fourth pound per acre.

But this is moot. Aldrin is not used on grapes in Kern County-as Mr. Morley specifies-and normal application of the pesticide in California is confined to soil as a grasshopper combatant. Although no aldrin was used, grapes showed up 3,000 miles away in Washington containing a massive dose of aldrin. Dr. Porter reports aldrin converts rapidly to dieldrin while exposed to sunlight-with only negligible amounts of aldrin remaining after 6 days. To achieve 18 parts per million, aldrin would have to be sprayed directly on the grapes just before shipment. And as the agricultural commissioner of Kern County has stated, aldrin is not used on grapes in that county.

The conclusion is clear: The grapes presented to the England Laboratory had somehow achieved strange qualities which I find very difficult to explain. And it seems possible that a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate has been the victim of duplicity.

If this be the case-this tactic on the part of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee is a vicious type of deceit and makes clear the witness has raised the pesticide question as part of UFWOC's "rule or ruin" methods. "Rule or ruin" is not my phrase. It is the statement of a dozen table grape growers who tried to negotiate a contract with UFWOC. The negotiations failed because the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee refused-in the statement's words-to bargain in good faith.

These growers exposed "the pesticide issue" in its true light by citing a statement written last July 3 by the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and addressed to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Here is the pertinent part of that statement:

That we are prepared to give a moratorium to the whole industry on the pesticide campaign for a limited time in exchange for an acceptable contract covering all workers, all crops.

This might be considered a new type of biological blackmail.

Mr. President, I believe the true purpose of UFWOC in raising the pesticide issue was well set forth in a conversation which Jerome Cohen had with Mrs. Eleanor Schulte, office manager for the South Central Farmers Committee in Delano, Calif., on June 10, 1969. I ask unanimous consent that a memorandum from Mrs. Schulte concerning this conversation be printed at this point in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the memorandum was ordered to be printed in the RECORD as follows:

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, obviously the union has raised the pesticide issue in an effort to further harass the grape industry and in furtherance of their design to force the grape growers to force their workers to join a union which they do not wish to join. I believe they have gone too far in this case and that this deplorable story will show the UFWOC effort up for what it really is.

One of the contributing factors in this entire unfortunate affair has been the contrived confusion, built on propaganda, half truths, and, in some cases, outright falsehood. I intend from now on to check all witnesses for creditibility, character, and purpose, so that the subcommittee may make proper and productive pronouncements as a result of these hearings.

Senator MONDALE. In any event, that is one of the reasons we held these hearings, in order to probe whether

Senator MURPHY. In any event, let's say I was mistaken and I would like to get on with the hearing, if I may. I say for the record