#help PrepTest 15 Section 2 Question 8

kennymischel

I'm having difficulty understanding why the correct answer choice for this problem is A. I'm struggling to derive from the stimulus that the government should continue trying to determine acceptable toxin levels. Any help would be appricated!

bananabo

Yeah, this one is a tough one. But here’s my attempt at it:

The first two sentences say this: It’s right for governments to abandon efforts to what levels of toxicity are allowed ONLY IF it can be argued that the level of toxic substances in food is zero

So translate that to lawgic…
Abandon efforts → level of toxic substances is zero

The next two sentences say this:
- However, virtually all foods have toxic substances even though they’re not harmful since they do not have toxic concentrations
- But we can never be certain the concentration is zero

So this tells me that we are essentially denying the necessary of “level of toxic substances is zero” if you deny this, you get the contrapositive of our lawgic statement:

/level of toxic substances is zero → /abandon efforts

So, given the premises (the last two sentences of our stimulus), we can conclude that the government should not abandon efforts, which is what answer choice A says