Q8 - Quartzbrook Farms wanted to test all

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Principle (Weaken)

Stimulus Breakdown:
The govt prohibits testing for a rare disease, because there's no evidence the disease causes much risk and the public might freak out and think that cattle needs to be tested for this disease if they allow testing. Meanwhile, though, prohibiting the test means that QF can't export its beef to another country.

Answer Anticipation:
It seems most likely that the answer will take the negative consequence of the govt's prohibition (QF can't export its beef to a certain country), and write a weakening principle that says
"if a test is needed for a commodity to be exported, then a government should allow that test".
But it could otherwise give us a principle that invalidates the government's reason for disallowing the test:
"The potential for misleading or worrying the public should never be a reason for disallowing a test."

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This looks pretty good. It says that the government cannot rightfully prohibit product testing. This govt prohibited product testing, so it appears to be at odds with the principle.

(B) The government's actions don't appear to go against this. It seems like they DID determine whether safety testing was justified, and we have no idea whether they provided that information to QF.

(C) This principle JUSTIFIES the govt's decision to not do the testing. We want the opposite

(D) This principle JUSTIFIES the govt's decision to not do the testing. We want the opposite

(E) This principle is about whether our govt can rightfully test other country's products. We need a principle about whether our govt can rightfully deny QF's ability to test its own products.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is an unusual Principle task; it feels most similar to an Inference-Must Be False question, which is also rare. For both tasks, we need to focus on finding an answer that actively goes against something we know. Answers (C) and (D) went WITH what the govt did. Some answers, such as (B) and (E) bring in new concepts we haven't talked about. Our job isn't to justify that these new concepts. We want to just think, "If I didn't hear about this before, then this answer can't be contradicting something I heard about."

#officialexplanation