For once, I'm biting my lip on this issue. Whilst I appreciate Scampi's feelings towards the unfortunate passing of a general operative, the issue of general law over "food law" regarding the performance of Quality Managers is an interesting thread that deserves deeper discussion.
To understand what you meant, I looked into UK legal system, and food safety is treated differently in the US system. Here, we have something called Administrative Law (different from the UK Administrative Law) that are the regulations issued by administrative agencies. Those agencies are set up through legislation (enabling legislation) which gives the mandate and scope of the agency. This is why FSMA is coming only due to a law passed by Congress, because the mandate of the FDA had to change to be able to shift to a preventative approach.
The regulations issued by administrative agencies are laws, just as binding as if they were passed by Congress. They are just promulgated through a different mechanism.
An administrative agency is part of the executive branch of the government. The President oversees how it is run. The agency can issue regulations, with the proper due notice to the public, but those regulations can be repealed by the legislature. So an FDA regulation could be removed by Congress, but not modified.
Sorry for the lesson on how US administrative law works, but our legal system, though based on British Common Law, changed after we became our own country after our Revolution, and it is fairly unique as I understand. I'm sure that some of you already knew this, but for others who have to deal with the FDA, it may help better understand how it works.
The practice of administrative law for an attorney is a little more complicated than tort law (lawsuits) or criminal law. It requires knowing the mandates and scope for many diverse agencies. Most lawyers don't want to get into all those complexities, or want to only deal with one agency's regulations. So having training for attorneys in law school to help them understand food law would be the start of having attorneys to add those issues to what they already work on.
This system is very complicated, but it is all part of the checks and balances in our Constitution, not allowing any one branch to get too uppity. We kind of got worried about that during our colonial days.
Martha
"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Viktor E. Frankl
"Life's like a movie, write your own ending." The Muppets