69. The Commission's attention was called to the current state of publications and abstracting in the food field. It noted that the means of publishing new information was adequate, although somewhat disorganized and the large number of publications which had to be followed by those interested in any aspects of food research, technology or regulations put a considerable burden upon them. The informational end of this matter, which might be divided into the two separate problems of information retrieval and provision of current abstracts was in a much less satisfactory state. Present means were inadequate for the prompt and complete abstracting of all new articles, books, patents and regulations and there was no unified comprehensive system in existence for the later easy retrieval of all this information. There were, in 1962, some 28 abstract journals, greatly overlapping and yet incompletely covering the field.
70. It was known that efforts to solve these problems were under way in several countries. While hoping for the success of these current efforts, an item on this matter had been included in the 1964/65 FAO “Program of Work and Budget”. This item expressed FAO's interest in this matter and noted that unless national and bi-national efforts succeeded in bringing order into this field, eventually some action by or through international agencies might be required to help nations to provide, in the first instance, an adequate and prompt food abstract reporting and retrieval system, and secondly, to work towards systematization in the field of publications covering this broad field. This matter was brought to the Commission's attention by the Secretariat since the progress of the Commission's program was to some extent dependent on the easy and prompt availability of such information.
