Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:69:p2
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 69 (pt 2/2)
Character Range: 121087–123479

in early 1940, as a result of the Commonwealth government's consideration, as a wartime measure, of adding a thiamine supplement to white flour used for making bread. Before any such move was made, Clements and his staff were asked to devise and carry out assays of the thiamine content of Australian wheat and flour. The Institute accomplished this project over the two years 1940-41. With Japan's entry into the war in early 1942, however, almost all of the Institute's staff dispersed to various military research units. For almost the entire year, the Institute had only four staff members, with Clements himself dispatched to the central office of the Department of Health.72

  Work at the Institute picked up again from the end of 1942. At the request of the Australian Food

  Council, the Institute embarked at this point on a nationwide education program on proper nutrition. This work led, from March 1944 onward, to the regular publication and distribution of a free newsletter, Food and Nutrition Notes and Reviews. Meanwhile in 1943, the government had become more acutely aware that food was a crucial part of the war effort. As a consequence, Clements was returned to the Institute to re-assemble his scientific staff and begin investigations into the foodstuffs of the Australian and American armed forces and of various Australian government departments. At the same time, the Nutrition Committee of the NHMRC had become concerned about the possible nutritional effects on the Australian population of food rationing and shortages. To determine if there were such effects and what they might be, the Institute was entrusted with the conduct of a nationwide food consumption survey. Canberra University College also started holding its Zoology I courses in the Institute in early 1944. With such major research and teaching projects in hand, the number of people working at the Institute swelled to over forty during 1944. For extra research space, staff moved into the southern basement, transferring all of the ethnographic material to its northern counterpart.73

  As the end of the war approached, it became necessary to provide for the Institute's return to the work on nutrition and growth which the war had interrupted. Cumpston and Clements now both felt that the building did not contain sufficient space to house the laboratories needed for the Nutrition Research