An owner who is both domiciled and has his principal office in the United States may get his containers initially approved by any party to the Convention, but must have his containers periodically inspected according to the procedures established by the Secretary. An owner who has one country as his domicile and another where he maintains his principal office, may have the initial approval done in any country which is a party to the Convention, but must have the periodic examination done in the country of his domicile or where he maintains his principal office, so long as the country under whose auspices he is having such examination done is a party to the Convention.

Finally, any owner who is neither domiciled nor maintains a principal office in a country which is a party to the Convention may submit [its] containers voluntarily for inspection and approval by the Secretary.

Section 4 details the duties of the Secretary of Transportation who is the "administration" of the Convention in the United States. There are three categories of duties imposed upon the Secretary by this bill: (1) After the Convention enters into force for the United States, the Secretary shall enforce the Convention in the United States. (2) On and after the date of enactment of the bill, the Secretary shall establish procedures for such enforcement and for collecting and disseminating data relating to container safety and the international transport of containers. (3) On and after such date, the Secretary may establish fees to be charged for services performed by him or under authority delegated by him, may authorize the affixation of safety approval plates to containers meeting the standards of the Convention, and may delegate any of his authority to inspect, test, and approve containers to any person. No person to whom the Secretary delegates authority under this bill may, however, issue any detention order or any other order enforcing the bill or the Convention. Section 5 authorizes the Secretary to initially test, inspect and approve containers and container designs, and to periodically examine containers in international transport to determine if they have a valid safety approval plate and that they do not have any significant evidence of obvious risk of safety. If they have no plate or there is such evidence, then he may issue a detention order to remove the container from service or allow it to be moved to a place where it can be repaired or disposed of. In addition, in those instances where there are minor violations of this bill or of the Convention, but the container is found to be in a safe condition, the Secretary may fashion lesser orders, restricting the movement of a container, or allowing it to be moved only to be unloaded and then brought into compliance with the bill or Convention, or applying any other remedy the Secretary finds appropriate.

Section 6 establishes penalties for violations of detention or other orders of the Secretary issued under this bill..

Section 7 provides that no employee may be discharged or discriminated against for reporting the existence of an unsafe container or a violation of this bill. The section also establishes a procedure for the Secretary of Labor to use in enforcing the provisions of this section.

Section 8 establishes a procedure, to be used by the Secretary of State, with the concurrences of the Secretary, in proposing amendments to the Convention. Section 9 provides an authorization of appropriation, beginning with fiscal year 1979.

S. Rep. No. 95-552, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., 3-4 (Oct. 27, 1977).

For further information concerning the Convention for Safe Containers of 1972. see the 1976 Digest, Ch. 10, § 9, pp. 566–567.

§ 10

Agriculture and Labor

International Structures for Food Assistance

World Food Council

In an address on June 20, 1977, before the Third Ministerial Session of the World Food Council held in Manila, Secretary of Agriculture

Bob S. Bergland outlined the U.S. position for meeting the need for food by the poorest people in the world. Secretary Bergland spoke, inter alia, of President Carter's commitment to meeting this concern, congressional action to provide developmental assistance, U.S. proposals for the International Wheat Council, U.S. efforts to meet the World Food Conference target of 10 million tons of food aid, and the commitment of the United States to contribute up to 125,000 tons to the Council's international emergency food reserve. Secretary Bergland's remarks were inserted in the Congressional Record by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who noted that the World Food Council was created by the World Food Conference of 1974 in Rome to decide collectively on policies which may alter the world food economy. Portions of Secretary Bergland's remarks follow:

The North-South dialogue is about human beings as well as nation-states. Our objective must be to assist individuals in their efforts to achieve a better and more satisfying life. We must design policies and programs for development, trade, and assistance which focus on meeting the basic human needs of the poorest people. Food is among the most basic human need. Indeed, adequate food is a human right and for this reason the United States regards the work of this council as vital.

We are here today to affirm our common commitment to the objective of eliminating hunger and malnutrition. . . . As President Carter said last month, "We know a peaceful world cannot long exist one-third rich and two-thirds hungry."

The majority of the world's very poor live in the rural areas of developing countries, and therefore, the basic problems of poverty, unemployment, and hunger cannot be solved without improvements in the agriculture of these countries. Efforts to increase food production in poor countries must be continued and expanded. Also serious efforts to improve distribution must be made to assure that food actually reaches the undernourished people.

We welcome the contribution of the conference on international economic cooperation toward our common objectives in food and agriculture. That conference reaffirmed the need for concerted efforts by all countries to achieve satisfactory rates of food production in the developing countries. It has contributed to the establishment of a $1 billion international fund for agricultural development. The conference also took actions which will contribute to the attainment of an international emergency food reserve coordinated by the world food program and will lead to improvement in the availability of essential agriculture inputs. . . .

The United States will continue to make a major contribution to programs aimed at promoting agriculture development. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 requires that the United States development assistance focus on helping the poor majority in the poorest coun

tries. The United States Bilateral Aid Program awaiting final action by the Congress calls for more than $700 million in food and agricultural development programs. Also, the United States plans to contribute $800 million per year from 1978 through 1980 to the World Bank's International Development Association. About 30 percent of these funds are distributed on a concessionary basis for food and agricultural projects in the most needy countries. Finally, the United States has pledged $200 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

In order to improve world food security, the United States already has taken action to establish a domestic foodgrain reserve. This reserve will be accumulated during this period of adequate supplies and low prices for return to the market during periods of short supplies and high prices. We commend the similar actions by other countries such as India, the Philippines and others.

But food security is not the sole obligation of the United States or a few nations. The world should not want its food security to rest in the hands of a few nations. Responsibility for world food security must be shared widely. Therefore, the United States hopes the International Wheat Council soon can lay the foundation for negotiations of an agreement which would include a coordinated system of nationally-held reserve stocks. We believe a world food security system should include these features: First, a reserve stock mechanism must be designed to reduce wide fluctuations around the long-term trend in market prices. We are willing to consider price indicators to trigger reserve actions. Second, the cost of reserve stocks must be shared among both exporting and importing nations. Special provisions should be made to assist poor nations in meeting their share and third, we must prevent interruptions in trade for grains which prevent adjustments in consumption and production in times of extreme surplus and scarcity.

The United States regards food aid as one of its most important contributions to development. Food aid programs should be designed primarily to meet the needs of people in developing countries, not the surplus disposal needs of developed countries. The United States now is seeking to improve its own food-aid programs in several ways. We want to maintain food-aid levels even in years of tight supply. Foodgrain reserves are one means to do so. We will make every effort to maintain our total level of food aid at a fair share of the World Food Conference target of 10 million tons. We want to make greater use of food aid as a developmental tool through longer-term support for agricultural development projects and by using funds generated from sales under concessionary food aid programs for agreed upon development projects. We also are reviewing ways in which food aid can make a maximum contribution to development, especially in the poorest nations. I should add that the United States recently agreed to contribute up to 125,000 tons to the international emergency food reserve as part of our cooperation with other nations.

123 Cong. Rec. S 10345 (daily ed. June 21, 1977).

Secretary Bergland's quotation of President Carter was taken from the President's speech, entitled "A Foreign Policy Based on America's Essential Character," which was made at the commencement exercises of Notre Dame University at South Bend, Indiana, on May 22, 1977. 75 Dept. of State Bulletin 621, 624 (1977).

On June 24, 1977, the third ministerial session of the 36-member World Food Council adopted unanimously an integrated 22-point program "of action to eradicate hunger and malnutrition." The Manila Communique of the World Food Council proposed action under six headings: increased food production, improved world food security, increased use of food aid, improved human nutrition, stabilized and expanded world food trade, and overall development consistent with food and nutrition objectives. World Food Council President Arturo Tanco of the Philippines stated that it was the first time that the three-year-old Council had arrived at a world action program to solve "this most critical of world's problems-hunger and malnutrition." This third ministerial session was attended by representatives of the developing and developed countries, as well as various international agencies.

Portions of the communique follow :

Our greatest concern is the absence of systematic and concerted action for implementing the World Food Conference's Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, the full text of which was before the Council. We believe that achievement of this goal is critical to the welfare and human development of over 500 million of the world's population.

We, the ministers and plenipotentiaries assembled here, recommend the following measures as the basic components of an integrated program `of action to eradicate hunger and malnutrition and recommend that governments and international agencies should act on them as matters of the highest priority:

A. To increase food production, the Council recommends that:

1. Countries which require special attention because of the seriousness of their food problems, their economic or resource limitations, their being victims of frequent natural calamities and their potential for increasing food produc tion should be accorded special treatment by governments and agencies of the United Nations as food priority countries.

2. Food priority countries, assisted upon their request by appropriate United Nations agencies, and especially the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] of the United Nations, the World Food Program, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, International Fund for Agricultural Development and regional banks, initiate or develop further specific proposals for increasing their food production growth rate to at least 4 percent per year and, to this end, determine as quickly as possible:

(a) The internal and external investment requirements to achieve the minimum 4 percent rate of growth of food production;

(b) The internal and external policy and other constraints to be overcome to achieve this production growth.

3. The international community effectively and substantially increase its official development assistance level to food and agriculture production in order to achieve, as soon as possible, at least a 4 percent sustained rate of

growth of food production in developing countries, taking into account that the estimate of $U.S. 8.3 billion in external resources on an annual basis (of which about $6.5 billion is estimated to be on concessional terms) is a necessary element for achieving this 4 percent rate of growth and that such external resources must be combined with a substantial increase in internal investment in food production in food priority countries. All concerned countries who have not already done so are urgently requested to ratify the International Fund for Agricultural Development Agreement, to make the Fifth replenishment of the International Development Association effective and to make possible a steady and significant growth in real resources provided to the United Nations Development Program for food and agriculture.

4. To support the increased food production efforts of developing countries, particularly food priority countries:

(a) Immediate steps should be initiated by governments, together with appropriate international agencies, to determine a minimum package of agricultural inputs in support of the expanded programs of food priority countries to achieve a minimum rate of growth of food production (including livestock and fisheries) of 4 percent per year.

(c) To support the seed development programs of developing countries, the international research institutes should cooperate in these efforts by expanding their research activities for the development of high yielding early maturing seed varieties suitable for rain-fed, dry land, irrigated and other conditions, and that the developing countries be supported through bilateral programs or contributions on a voluntary basis to the FAO Seed Industry Development Program in an amount of at least $U.S. 20 million.

(d) While the package of inputs proposed above is being developed, donor countries should increase their assistance to the most seriously affected developing countries through the most appropriate bilateral and/or multilateral channel, including the International Fertilizer Supply Scheme of FAO, bearing in mind that the needs of the most seriously affected developing countries in 1975/76 for fertilizer nutrients were estimated at the seventh special session of the United Nations General Assembly at 1 million tons. At the same time, international agencies and donor countries concerned should, on a voluntary basis, extend their financial and technical assistance to developing countries, to encourage their self-reliance through the installation of new fertilizer and pesticide capacities and by improvement in the operation of existing facilities. To the fullest extent practicable, measures should also be taken to reduce undue fluctuations in the price and supply of agricultural inputs in international markets.

B. To improve and ensure world food security, the Council recommends that: 5. All countries with accumulated grain stocks as a result of good harvests should make such special efforts as are required to ensure continuity of supply to countries relying on imports to feed their people, especially poor food importing countries, including, where necessary, to convert a portion of these stocks into national reserves in 1977 while intensified efforts are underway to develop an adequate food reserve program in appropriate international negotiations. Negotiations should proceed as rapidly as possible to establish, within the framework and as one of the important features of a new International Grains Arrangement, an international system of nationally held reserves, sufficient to ensure adequate supplies of food grains for importing countries as well as to contribute to price stability. These reserves should operate under rules which ensure fair and just prices to consumers and remunerative returns to producers to encourage continued production. The size and cost-sharing formula between exporting and importing countries, together with other elements of such reserves, should be determined through negotiations, taking into account the ability of the various countries to contribute to such costs. Special attention must be given to the necessity to ensure the continued availability of grain to food aid needs, and such attention should be reflected in a new Food Aid Convention which should be negotiated in connection with a new International Grains Arrangement. All efforts should be made to conclude this Arrangement by June 1978.