PrepTest 153, Section 2, Question 3
Food columnist: Only 2 percent of imported seafood(30 more words not shown)
The answer to which one(13 more words not shown)
- ADo the health(13 more words not shown)
- BWhat kinds of(5 more words not shown)
- CWhat percentage of(11 more words not shown)
- DWhat percentage of(11 more words not shown)
- EWhat percentage of(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Only 2 percent? That sounds low. I'd want to know why so little imported seafood is inspected and what gets selected for inspection.
But the columnist goes straight from that number to recommending domestic seafood. What if only 1 percent of domestic seafood is inspected? Then switching to domestic seafood wouldn't give us the improvement in inspections that the recommendation seems to assume. It could mean buying seafood that's even less likely to have been inspected.
The imported rate can sound alarming without telling us which alternative is better. Domestic seafood might be better, equally bad, or worse. We have been given only one side of that comparison.
What we’re looking for
So for the evaluation question, I want the missing number: what percentage of domestic seafood undergoes these inspections? We don't have to solve every question about food safety. We need information that tests the columnist's stated reason for preferring one source.
Working the answers
- A
Inspections could miss some risks and still make buying one kind of seafood safer than buying another. The recommendation promises an increased likelihood of safety, not perfect safety. Knowing whether inspections catch absolutely everything doesn't fill in the missing domestic-versus-imported comparison. Inspection quality can matter, but perfection is not the requirement the argument needs.
- B
Whether seafood poses one kind of health risk or several doesn't tell us which source is safer. The same risk could occur in both domestic and imported seafood. We need information that helps compare those two options, not just information about seafood hazards in general.
- C
'Other than seafood' moves away from the product we're deciding whether to buy. Imported fruit could be inspected at a very high rate while imported seafood is inspected at the stated 2 percent rate. That would not tell us whether domestic seafood is the safer choice.
- D
This has the same mismatch on the domestic side. The city or country could inspect nearly all of its other food and hardly any seafood. We need the domestic seafood rate specifically.
- ECorrect
A much higher domestic inspection rate would help support the columnist's reason for switching. An equally low rate would remove the apparent inspection advantage, while a lower rate—such as our hypothetical 1 percent—would make that reason especially doubtful.
The answer wouldn't prove safety by itself. It would tell us whether the inspection-based comparison the columnist relies on has support. That is why this question is useful for evaluating the argument.
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