In a restaurant for example, it might be number of sinks, size of kitchen and type of ventilation. The danger is that the controls become so detailed to cover all variance that they sound senseless and may miss their objective altogether. At best, operators resent the intrusion and doubts to their professionalism. A more worrying outcome is to turn a disposition to co-operate into a disposition to resist. It is therefore not surprising that many health authorities are turning to education and moral suasion in the hope of achieving voluntary rather than coercive compliance.
Regulations often have unintended consequences.
By their very nature, unintended consequences are hard to predict. However that doesn't absolve us from carefully examining the seriousness of possible consequences of all new regulations. It is extremely hard to abandon regulations even when adverse side effects begin to outweigh gains. Not only do they have statutory backing,but they often develop a momentum of their own which, once established, is extremely difficult to subvert. Making rules tends to be easier than implementing them and rule makers often under-estimate the many practical difficulties involved.