Critical Reasoning

Goronian lawmaker: Goronia's Cheese Importation Board, the agency responsible for inspecting all wholesale shipments of cheese entering Goronia from abroad and rejecting shipments that fail to meet specified standards, rejects about one percent of the cheese that it inspects. Since the health consequences and associated costs of not rejecting that one percent would be negligible, whereas the cost of maintaining the agency is not, the agency's cost clearly outweighs the benefits it provides.

Knowing the answer to which of the following would be most useful in evaluating the lawmaker's argument?

A. Are any of the types of cheeses that are imported into Goronia also produced in Goronia?
B. Has the Cheese Importation Board, over the last several years, reduced its operating costs by eliminating inefficiencies within the agency itself?
C. Does the possibility of having merchandise rejected by the Cheese Importation Board deter many cheese exporters from shipping substandard cheese to Goronia?
D. Are there any exporters of cheese to Goronia whose merchandise is never rejected by the Cheese Importation Board?
E. How is the cheese rejected by the Cheese Importation Board disposed of?

OA: C Why not B

NandishSS wrote:Goronian lawmaker: Goronia's Cheese Importation Board, the agency responsible for inspecting all wholesale shipments of cheese entering Goronia from abroad and rejecting shipments that fail to meet specified standards, rejects about one percent of the cheese that it inspects. Since the health consequences and associated costs of not rejecting that one percent would be negligible, whereas the cost of maintaining the agency is not, the agency's cost clearly outweighs the benefits it provides.

Knowing the answer to which of the following would be most useful in evaluating the lawmaker's argument?

A. Are any of the types of cheeses that are imported into Goronia also produced in Goronia?
B. Has the Cheese Importation Board, over the last several years, reduced its operating costs by eliminating inefficiencies within the agency itself?
C. Does the possibility of having merchandise rejected by the Cheese Importation Board deter many cheese exporters from shipping substandard cheese to Goronia?
D. Are there any exporters of cheese to Goronia whose merchandise is never rejected by the Cheese Importation Board?
E. How is the cheese rejected by the Cheese Importation Board disposed of?

OA: C Why not B

Conclusion: the cost of maintaining the agency is greater than the 'cost' of allowing the rejected cheese to be imported.
Premise: the agency rejects 1% of the cheese it inspects

The question is whether the agency's value is entirely captured by preventing the ill-effects of the cheese it rejects. If for example, the existence of the agency caused manufacturers of truly toxic cheese not to bother attempting to export it to Goronia, then the agency would have value beyond the cheese it's rejected. Put another way, if the agency disappeared, it would't just be that 1% of bad cheese making its way into Goronia, it would be all the awful cheeses that other cheese purveyors hadn't bothered to send because they knew it would be rejected. This is the notion expressed in C

B is irrelevant, because even if the agency's costs have dropped over the years, its cost now is, according to the argument, too high if its only value is preventing the 1% of cheese it rejects from being consumed by unsuspecting Goronians. The high costs are there. That's simply a premise. The issue is whether there are other benefits that the argument has neglected to fully consider.