UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT SERVICE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20250

August 8, 1967

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics

Stanford University Medical School
Palo Alto, California 94304

Dear Professor Lederberg:

I have been enjoying your articles "Science and Man" which have
been appearing in the Saturday issues of the Washington Post,

Particularly have I been interested in the most recent ones
since they deal with matters in which we have been deeply interested
and quite active for the last several years.

While it seems entirely reasonable to a biochemist that amino
acids be added to cereal grains to improve their amino acid
profile, this comes as quite a shock to traditfonal nutritionists
who can think only in terms of increasing animal protein supplies,
As you correctly point out, this is an economic problem; in many
parts of the world there is no question of being able to obtain
adequate protein from animal sources, So our job in the last
year and a half has been primarily one of selling nutritionists
and responsible government officials to persuade them to look at
cereal fortification seriously, No doubt there will be a number
of technical and nutritional problems that should be solved before
such procedure can be wide spread. But we will only get to these
after we have persuaded enough people to allow us to get started.

I thought that, perhaps, you might be interested in some material
from here that speaks to this point. I am enclosing the following:

A copy of the LADS Newsletter which contains correspondence
between Secretary of Agriculture Freeman and the Food and
a2e

Nutrition Board of the National Academy (page 6),

An informal summary of a recent trip which I took,

This summary includes a review of the status of amino
fortification,

A copy of a letter to Dr, Newell which outlines
some of the problems we must face as we develop a
fortification program,

A copy of a summary of a presentation at the last
AAAS meeting discussing our programs, and

A copy of a talk I gave several years ago which
described in detail our position on new protein foods
from oilseeds,
I hope that you may find some of these of interest,
Sincerely yours,

Aaron M, Altschul
Special Assistant for
International Nutrition Improvement

Enclosures