The sea, with its vast untapped living resources, offers man his greatest challenge and his greatest opportunity in the quest to free the world from hunger, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall said today in connection with Freedom From Hunger Week proclaimed by President John F. Kennedy.
National Freedom from Hunger Week, March 17-23, is especially appropriate because as part of the Freedom From Hunger Campaign, the United States will host to the World Food Congress in Washington D.C., June 14-18, 1963. The United States, as a member of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, is participating with nearly 100 other countries in the FAO international drive against hunger. About 1,200 people will participate in the June conference.
Secretary Udall pointed out that the Department of the Interior is participating in the international Fishery investigations now underway in the tropical Atlantic and also in the big international effort to secure more adequate fishery information in the Indian Ocean. The results of these investigations will not only add to the world’s knowledge of the resources of these important area, but should be the basis for self-help by many of the emerging nations which now feel the pinch of hunger.
The Department also has answered the request of many nations in Central and South America and in Africa for technical assistance in solving fishery problems, Secretary Udall said. Department scientists have given advice to such countries as Panama, Brazil, Egypt and several African nations bordering on the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the Department participates in the foreign trainee program under which many fishery students or technicians from foreign countries receive training in fishery sciences in this country.
In emphasizing the importance of Freedom From Hunger Week, Secretary Udall said:
“The United States has been uniquely blessed with its bounty of foods and it must exert world leadership in helping solve the food problems of the starving and malnourished peoples.
“While fishing for food has been one of man’s means of existence since before the dawn of recorded history, we know little about the sea and its resources. We are approaching an ear when man will harvest his food from the sea instead of hunting for it as he does now. Just as man moved from the land economy of hunting ages ago, and turned to a pasture and farm economy, so is he moving from an ocean economy based upon hunting for his food to a more productive and more certain way of obtaining food by managing the vas pastures of the sea.”
Secretary Udall also quoted the President, who in a March 1961 message to the Congress, stated:
“The seas offer a wealth of nutritional resources. They already are a principal source of protein. They can provide many times the current food supply if we but learn how to garner and husband this self-renewing larder To meet the vast needs of an expanding population, the bounty of the sea must be made more available. Within two decades our own Nation will require over a million more tons of seafood than we now harvest.”
Secretary Udall said that fish protein concentrate (FCP) can contribute valuably to this program and emphasized the high priority the Department of the Interior is giving to developing this low-cost, high protein fishery product. This has particular significance because one of the major items on the World Food Congress agenda is the role of fisheries in improving the nutritive diets of poorly fed people.
