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.
I see no problem at all. People should be free to take risks. Buying food from an unknown supplier from an unknown land with no certification at all is a considerable risk to take, but you should be free to do so. You should be free to play Russian roulette if you want to.
By the way, you might be overreacting to what happened in Fukushima (the German government-controlled organic farm was orders of magnitude more lethal), and you should consider that retailers that want to stay in business for long would not sell completely unknown products. That would avoid the need for the consumer to worry too much with producers certifications.
Yes, people need (want! demand!) to be taken care of because as an individual you have little influence over most aspects of society.
Precisely, and there's no better way to suit any demand than competition. A monopoly just won't do it well. This economic rule applies to everything, consumer protection is not an exception.
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.
You really trust an armed gang that forces us to finance them more than an average retailer that voluntarily provide you something, without pointing you any guns?
Now to get back to the story. It is a shame that the regulations turned out to be bad for that business.
It's expected. Again, monopolies don't provide good products or services, when compared to free market competitors.
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.
You sound like a anti-corporations leftist. You really can't see that the only reason these "big companies" survive and make so much "big bucks" is because they can easily get rid of these annoying ice cream seller ladies with such state regulations? This is the whole point of OP by the way.
Another thing is that you can't over specify the law.
Too many exceptions and it will become unmanageable.
When voluntary regulations get unmanageable, people are free to pick others. Can't do that with those imposed by government, though.