Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall will speak in the morning of June 6, in Washington, D.C., to the World Food Congress, sponsored by the Foo d and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Department of the Interior reported today.
The World Food Congress convenes a 15-day meeting in Washington, June 4, to highlight the midway point in FAO’s Freedom-From-Hunger Campaign. It also marks the 20th Anniversary of the founding of FAO.
A major event in FAO’s worldwide campaign concerning current and future problems in nutrition, food supply, and distribution, the Congress is hosted by the United States Government. Director-General B.R. Sen of FAO has invited over 1,000 leading figures throughout the world to come to Washington to participate in the Congress and to make recommendations or cooperative international action.
Secretary Udall, as head of the Department concerned with the living resources of the seas and inland waters, has been asked to take a leading role in this Congress.
The World Food Congress will feature addresses at full membership sessions each morning. Speakers will include such world-renowned figures as Dr. Arnold Toynbee, British historian; Dr. Gunnar Myrdal, Professor at Stockholm University; Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveria, former President of Brazil; and Paul Hoffman, Managing Director of the United National Special Fund.
Also speaking will be Dr. C. Glen King, chairman of the Nutrition Foundation; Gaston Palewski, French Minister of the State of Scientific Research and L.S. Senghor, President of Senegal. In the afternoon of each day, four Commissions will meet to deal with specific items on the agenda.
Fisheries is a key item on the program in the World Food Congress. Besides being considered as a separate subject in the Technical Commission I the afternoon of June 13, fisheries will be discussed at other sessions. For example, other agenda items deal with such subjects as the development of water resources; relation of nutrition to human health; the importance of food preservation and processing; the role of applied research; the role of long-range research and the role of cooperatives.
Although the fishing industry is thousands of years old, its full potential has yet to be realized. The marine resources of the world are considered to be the last, large untapped source of animal protein available for the world’s people.
In 1950, world production of aquatic species totaled 22,300,000 tons. Since then, world output has more than doubled to reach a total of 45,415,000 tons in 1961. So far, the fishing industries of many countries have concentrated chiefly on species readily available to their fishing fleets or on certain species highly prized in world markets. The world’s oceans still harbor large quantities of aquatic resources that are underutilized; some are even yet untapped. Many experts believe that world fishery production again can be more than doubled.
