.Another addition to the food safety library is arriving later this month.
“Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Unravels the Myths and the Solutions” is scheduled to be available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, IndieBound and Bookshop.org beginning Oct. 26, 2021.
The author is Richard Williams, Ph.D., who worked for the Food and Drug Administration from 1980 to 2007, finishing up as the Director for Social Science with the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN).
Previews report that Williams makes an argument that the FDA should abandon its previous practices and instead begin to “think outside of the box” by embracing new approaches and technologies that can bring about a safer and healthier future for people in the United States.
His book will promote technologies with “tremendous promise of improving food safety.” Williams sees “personalized nutrition“ using genetics or microbiomes as weapons in the fight against obesity.
His technology bent, including robotics, 3D printing, genetic engineering, precision fermentation, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, microbiome research, big data, and blockchain, are consistent with FDA’s “New Era of Smarter Food Safety.”
The New Era is largely the brainchild of Frank Yiannas, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response. He has described the New Era as ” more important today than ever before in your history to work together to create a more digital, traceable, and safer food system.”
William’s book will promote the use of those technologies over FDA’s traditional practices that involve regulation and education. FDA’s New Era authors have acknowledged that traditional practices have not reduced foodborne illnesses in recent years.
With half the population on track to be obese by 2050, Williams depicts FDA as wasting its time with such issues as whether almond milk can be labeled as milk. He thinks FDA must off-load some of these minor responsibilities and focus on the important food safety challenges.
The previews say the Williams book will show how FDA controls the oversight of its activities and then misuses science and economics to support regulations that do not work.
The book is being promoted as “part exposé, part memoir,” taking the reader inside FDA to expose its inner works that “drove failed strategies.” Since leaving FDA, Williams has worked on new sciences including genetic and microbial sciences.
Those post-FDA assignments for Williams have included being Vice President for Policy Research at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. serving on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board, being Chairman of the Board for the Center for Truth in Science and as a board member of the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences.
For more information on the book’s release, go to www.richardawilliams.com.
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