Far From Home
Christine Taylor
Office of Science and Health Coordination
United States Food and Drug Administration
For Christine Taylor ’77g, ’86g NUTR, a two-year assignment with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) led to a career promoting healthy nutrition policies and practices around the world. Upon receiving her Ph.D. in nutrition from Penn State in 1986, her plan was to follow the traditional career path into industry or academia. “Most of us weren’t thinking about government,” Taylor says, because at the time, government agencies were not yet pursuing policies related to health and wellness. The FDA, however, offered her a position that would allow her to do applied science that “seemed like a nice jumping-off point,” Taylor says. “Once I got into it, I loved it.”
photo by Abby Diehl
Christine Taylor has served as a visiting expert for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
In 1995, Taylor received an assignment as a visiting expert for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The United States had implemented the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 requiring that all food products sold in the U.S. bear a nutrition label. Taylor’s job was to promote food labeling on products around the world to enable international agreement on the usefulness of nutrition labeling and international trade of food products.
Upon returning to the U.S., Taylor spent several years as deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Special Nutritionals before being appointed director of the Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling and Dietary Supplements, which was charged with regulating food labeling and nutrition claims for products such as dietary supplements, infant formula and medical foods. The challenge of leading the office, which was created by the merger of two existing offices, was enormous, but it allowed her to hone her skills as an administrator and leader. “People are fearful when they think they don’t know something,” she says. Taylor met with her staff regularly, answering their questions and quelling their fears.
Taylor found these skills to be very useful when, in 2004, she was appointed senior advisor to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs on International Nutrition Policy and was assigned to a two-year stint with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland.
At WHO, Taylor took the lead on a “nutrient risk assessment” project. The influx of dietary supplements and fortified foods onto supermarket shelves means that people are consuming more vitamins and minerals than ever before. “Vitamins and minerals are essential things for the human body,” says Taylor, but some research has begun to show that too much can be problematic. But before standards regulating amounts of vitamins and minerals can be established, “you have to understand the science,” explains Taylor. Her job was to work with scientists around the world to develop a model for determining “how much is too much.”
Taylor stresses that nutrient risk assessment is important not just for industrial nations but for developing nations as well. Fortified foods and supplements are available in many developing countries, many of which have high rates of diseases that can lead people to metabolize vitamins and minerals differently.
In 2005, under Taylor’s direction, 18 scientific experts from countries including South Korea, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, Sweden, Ghana, India and Thailand were convened at a workshop to develop a model for nutrient risk assessment. In early 2006, Taylor’s office issued its final report, which she hopes will generate further research in the area.
Taylor is now back in the U.S. and is working in the Office of Science and Health Coordination in the FDA Office of the Commissioner. Taylor plans to adjust to her new job at the FDA and looks forward to spending more time with her family, including her mother, who is 85; her husband; and her niece and nephew.
