At high energies, significant polarization effects have long been observed in inclusive A production from the collision of unpolarized hadrons. Although many experiments on hyperon production have been performed, very few used polarized hadron beams and none have involved exclusive measurements.
An independent puzzle in the strangeness sector has been revealed by recent observations of a large violation of the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka (OZI) rule in $-meson production by anti-protons.
These violations have been interpreted by some to indicate sizeable strange-quark content of the nucleon. Understanding these two problems constitutes the major goal of the DISTO program at Saturne. The DISTO experiment is designed to study hyperons (A$) and vector mesons (4,~) produced in p'p collisions at three incident proton momenta: 3.67, 3.31 and 2.94 GeV/c. Detection of all charged particles in the final state allows exclusive measurements for hyperons, while the use of polarized beam makes it possible to measure analyzing powers A, and the spin transfer coefficient DNN, in addition to the polarization of the outgoing hyperon. An outline of the physics motivation and a brief description of the experimental setup is given. Some preliminary results from the data taken at 3.67 GeV/c are presented.