Where in the constellation of food encyclopedias can you find information about trans fat, organic milk, free-range farming, or genetically engineered seeds? I did not find any, not at least in four or five titles that I checked, including Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford Univ. Pr., 2006). The nearest relative to what Williams and Carter set out to create with this two-volume encyclopedia is the “CQ Researcher” (Congressional Quarterly, 1991), which covers emerging trends in many fields, including food. Had this project been better executed, it would have filled a niche in the existing literature.

In terms of format, I would say it is roughly comparable to The Encyclopedia of Education Law, edited by Charles J. Russo (Sage, 2008), the Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law, edited by Paul Finkelman and Tim Alan Garrison (CQ Pr., 2009), and Vicki R. Patton-Hulce's Environment and the Law: A Dictionary (ABC-Clio, 1995) in that they all try to present the current state of the law on a given subject in a way that is accessible to the average reader. Browsing through them, you might find an analysis of a pivotal legal case, an overview of a current trend, a biography of a leading player in that field, or an essay on a facet of the judicial system that helps the reader make sense of the other entries in the encyclopedia. What I found in sampling the entries in this food encyclopedia was that some of the entries about legal terms make no reference to food and some entries about food make no reference to law. In the others, the editors did a better job of keeping the focus on the subject in hand.

While the environmental dictionary noted above was written by a single author, the other two had a panel of contributors, and that was the format adopted by Williams and Carter. Looking at all four, this particular endeavor rates the lowest in terms of credibility. We aren't told much about the authors beyond the fact that they are administrators at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. Including more information about this institution and the credentials of contributors would have been an important asset. While some entries have further reading suggestions, they tend to be kind of skimpy.

Finally, I have to say that the appendixes are way out of bounds. One shouldn't include fifty-page Supreme Court cases full-text, but rather excerpt them. It's the editor's responsibility to select the portions of these judicial opinions that are most relevant to the reader's needs. All of the cases I reviewed in the appendixes of this food encyclopedia are available full-text from Google Scholar. Why pay to have hard copies? This source is not recommended.