GMAT Essays (AWA)

Hello dear people,

I've written another essay and I would be very grateful if somebody could rate. I'm never sure if I get the premises and assumptions right.

Some details:
non-native English speaker
Analyzing topic: 7 min
Writing: 17 min
Reviewing: 6 min
Words: 563


The following appeared as part of an article in a trade magazine:
"During a recent trial period in which government inspections at selected meat-processing plants were more frequent, the amount of bacteria in samples of processed chicken decreased by 50 percent on average from the previous year's level. If the government were to institute more frequent inspections, the incidence of stomach and intestinal infections throughout the country could thus be cut in half. In the meantime, consumers of Excel Meats should be safe from infection because Excel's main processing plant has shown more improvement in eliminating bacterial contamination than any other plant cited in the government report."

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

Meat is an important part of our foodchain and it delivers a lot of vital proteins. As wealth is spreading in the western world food can be afforded by more and more people. Therefore it is important that there are unitary food controls granting that the food we eat isn't contaminated with dangerous bacteria.

In the preceding statement, the author claims that if the government would increase the number of inspections a year, the number of stomach and intestinal infections would be cut in half. He also claims that the consumer of Excel meat are safe from infections.
Though his claim may well have merit, the author presents a poorly reasoned argument, based on several questionable premises and assumptions, and based solely on the evidence the author offers, his argument cannot be accepted as valid.

The primary issue with the author's reasoning lies in his unsubstantiated premise.
He states that more frequent inspections of meat-processing plants would lead to a 50% decrease of bacteria on chicken meat in comparison to a previous trial.
But the weakspot of this premise is that the reader doesn't know if the choice of the meat-processing plants is representative for all meat-processing plants of the country. And since there are a lot of types of bacteria the author omits to point out which bacteria he is talking about.
Another important point is that the author infers the safety of the consumers of Excel's meat from an improvement of its main foot-processing plant in the government report in comparison to other food-processing plants. But only because the main food-processing plant has eliminated bacteria doesn't mean that all of Excel's plants are not contaminated.
The author's premise, the basis of his argument, lack any legitimate evidentiary support and render his conclusion unacceptable.

In addition, the author makes an important assumption that remains unproven.
He simply concludes that an improvement regarding any elimination of bacteria would prevent the consumers from stomach and intestinal infections.
While there may be some bacteria causing stomach and intestinal infections, there also might be another harmless type of bacteria. An elimination of this type would simply lead to no change, if despite that fact bacteria of the dangerous type can be found in the meat.
The author weakens his argument by making assumptions and failing to provide explination of the link between the elimination of bacteria and prevention of dangerous infections he assumes exist.

While the author has included various drawbacks into his argument'S premises and assumptions, that is not to say that his entire argument is without base.
If he would have expanded upon the choice of the food-processing plants that has been made in order to clarify if the data is represantative or if he would sepcify the encountered and eliminated types of bacteria he could strengthen his argument.
Though there are several issues with the author's reasoning at present, with the research and clarification, he could improve his argument significantly.

In sum, the author's illogical argument is based on unsupported premises and unsubstantiated assumptions that render his conclusion invalid.
If the author truly hopes to change his readers' minds on the issue, he would have to largely restructure his argument, fix the flaws in his logic, clearly explicate his assumptions, and provide evidentiary support. Without these things, his poorly reasoned argument will likely convince few people.

I did not like your use of accessory information in your previous essay (#143) and felt it was unnecessary but your 'general introduction' in the present essay brings about a smooth transition between P1 and P2. So I guess, while the template suggested by a user on BTG for AWA essays is great, we nevertheless need to customize its use depending on the topic given to us.

I'd argue on the following grounds:

(1) The author assumes that meat processing plants are the ONLY source of bacterial infection in processed meat. What is infections were known to occur during transport or at storage facilities?
(2) The data indicates reduction of an incidence of infection by 50% in chicken meat. We do not know whether this is true for other types of meat.
(3) The author assumes that all those people who suffer from stomach and intestinal infections are meat eaters and does not evaluate the possibility of other sources / causes of infection.
(4) We have no way of determining the criteria used for selecting companies for inspection by the government agencies. For instance, the government agency might have instituted an inspection only for those companies against whom they had received an increasing number of complaints from consumers in the recent past. Or, the agency might have only randomly selected a few companies in each region for inspection. In either case, the data and findings in the report cannot be concluded as comprehensive and there is a fair possibility that eaters of other meat brands are ALSO as safe as eaters of Excel meat.