Isn't it obvious that the latter *will* work better?
This is SUCH a dangerous assumption.
Imagine a certificate based situation.
Producer A produces milk, but his farm is in the neigborhood of Fukushima.
The milk is radioactive and he cannot sell it as a certified product.
He goes on to sell it to producer B that produces uncertified icecreams from it.
Producer B goes on to sell his icecreams in Europe and noone knows his milk came from next door to Fukushima.
Altho the customers know the icecream is uncertified they don't think it tastes spoiled and is much cheaper than certified ice cream and so they go ahead and consume the radioactive icecream en masse.
This is what you will get with a voluntarily certificate program.
It just won't work itself out in an economy where most people don't have enough money to pay for everything that they are made to beliefe they need.
There will always be a pretty hefty pressure om making products cheaper and consumers will let themselfs get poisoned or killed for buying the wrong products.
It is just the world we live in and it is just the outcome of human nature as it applies to our current civilization.
Yes, people need (want! demand!) to be taken care of because as an individual you have little influence over most aspects of society.
If you had to choose between a party that wants to make money off of you by selling food and the government then i know what i would choose to decide what is healthy.
That is why we need the regulations and that is why we have them,.
Now to get back to the story. It is a shame that the regulations turned out to be bad for that business. But these same regulations prevent the big ciompanies from selling poison.
And these big companies produce so much that there are a lot more people involved.
If they produced poisonous foodstuff then there will be a much bigger problem than this lady having to give up her icecream store.
So it's not so black and white as the article makes it out to be.
Another thing is that you can't over specify the law.
Too many exceptions and it will become unmanageable.
So, altho theoretically an exception in the law coul work for this case, there will be many more similar but unique cases, all of which will require their own exception to the law.
Remember that these kinds of laws about regulations were written up over the past decenia exactly because hygene became a problem as people started consuming more.
It is a direct consequence of our consumption habbits.
The lady in question should deal with it and so should all other people in the western world.
But of course, as stated above by someone else, we should look critically at all regulations and see if they are still usefull instruments to our society.
