PrepTest 153, Section 2, Question 1
In situations where it is difficult to make(66 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(5 more words not shown)
- Aconsumers who are(16 more words not shown)
- Bmanufacturers should use(5 more words not shown)
- Cproviding consumers with(21 more words not shown)
- Dconsumers should demand(7 more words not shown)
- Emanufacturers should be(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Giving shoppers information makes sense. If I care how a product was made but can't find that out, how am I supposed to choose between it and another product?
Still, having information isn't necessarily the same as understanding it. Think of the nutrition label on a soda. I can see the listed ingredients and numbers, but can I translate all of that into a judgment about how nutritious the drink is? A label gives me something to work with; it doesn't automatically do all the thinking for me.
Here, though, we're told that the labeling requirement resolved the difficulty of determining whether a food contained nutritious ingredients. Let's accept that example and see where the author takes it.
The new problem has the same shape. Consumers care about conserving energy, but they can't easily find out how much energy went into making a product. We solved the food-information problem by making manufacturers print the information. So my prediction for the blank is: require manufacturers to print the energy information too.
What we’re looking for
Read that into the argument. We start with a rule about giving consumers relevant information, apply it to nutrition, and then apply it to energy.
Working the answers
- A
This tells a consumer who already has the information what to choose. But the problem at the blank is that consumers don't have an easy way to find the information. The food example supplied it through a labeling requirement. It did not say shoppers were required to choose the most nutritious food.
- B
A nutrition label doesn't mean the manufacturer has to get rid of junk food. It can still sell the food while telling shoppers what's in it. Similarly, an energy label could disclose a high-energy manufacturing process without requiring the manufacturer to reduce its energy use. B changes the product-making requirement instead of completing the information-sharing comparison.
- C
Perhaps disclosure would eventually reduce fossil-fuel impacts, but we'd need more steps: consumers would have to use the information, change their choices, and produce that effect. The argument hasn't established those steps. Its immediate point is to give people the information needed to make their own decisions, not to guarantee a particular environmental or economic result.
- D
This again tells consumers how to behave. Demanding lower-energy products is different from requiring information about the products available. Someone could care about energy use and want to compare products without making the particular demand D recommends.
- ECorrect
Manufacturers must supply the missing energy information on their products, just as food manufacturers must supply nutrition information. That carries the same solution across to the new problem. Consumers interested in energy use would have relevant information that they otherwise had difficulty obtaining.
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