A pet food company recalled 4 million pounds of pet food in response to complaints that pets that had consumed the food experienced vomiting, lethargy, and other signs of illness. After the recall, the pet food company tested samples from the recalled food and determined that all chemicals found in the food were chemicals that are approved for use in pet food. Thus, the recalled food was not responsible for these symptoms, and the company should not devote further resources to the investigation.
The scenario provided to us is of a pet food company that recalled 4 million pounds of pet food due to complaints that the pets that consumed this food had experienced vomiting, lethargy and other illness. The argument states that the recalled food was not responsible for pets falling ill and hence, the company should not devote further resources to the investigation. This is based on the understanding that the recalled food samples tested by the company had chemicals which were approved for use in pet food.
Multiple pets being affected after consuming the pet food could be a mere coincidence. But if this number is large, then there is a good chance of the existence of an underlying reason that caused this event. The company should not just dismiss the fact that their product is responsible for these symptoms, based on a few tests that the run on the recalled samples. There are a lot of factors and possible explanations that need to be considered before arriving at such a conclusion.
The company needs to understand what is the size of the pet population that was affected and showed signs of symptoms as compared to the total pets that consumed the pet food. Had each of these pets consumed the same batch of pet food. The manufacturing and selling of any product is a long process and goes through various stages - gathering of raw ingredients, manufacturing at a particular location, testing of products at a particular location, storage and delivery through a particular supplier and so on. It would be important for the company to understand if all the pets that showed signs of illness consumed pet food from a particular batch or on a particular date.
Next, the company needs to take into account the size of the pet population that was affected as compared to the total pet population that consumed the food. Surveying and understanding what is the commonality between the affected pets is critical for the company to get to the bottom of the matter. Some of the factors that the company needs to look into can be as follows - Did each of these pets consumed the same batch of the product? Do all the affected pets belong to a particular breed? Did all these pets belong to a particular region? Did all these pet consumed any food product before or after consuming the pet food or did they perform any common activity.
Recalling all 4 million pounds of pet food and testing only a few samples of the entire lot, would not serve the purpose. The company needs to ensure that at least one sample of each batch has been tested to make a claim that the recalled food did not cause the stated symptoms in pets. Chemicals in a food product need not be the only reason that could cause side-effects. Expiration of the product, spoilage of the product due to weather conditions like heat, humidity, temperature or chemical reactions due to the product being consumed after another product are few of the many possible reasons.
The company should conduct an in-depth analysis to find out what could have possibly caused these illnesses. The company should take ownership and test every possible scenario and only once it is confident, it should go ahead and declare that it is not responsible for the event that occurred.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 562 350
No. of Characters: 2634 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.869 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.687 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.581 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.435 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.535 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.261 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.353 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.124 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 8, column 301, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: Some
...any to get to the bottom of the matter. Some of the factors that the company needs to look ...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, hence, if, look, so, then, at least
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2694.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 562.0 441.139720559 127% => OK
Chars per words: 4.79359430605 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.86893614481 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64681098112 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.391459074733 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 833.4 705.55239521 118% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.3515288747 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.130434783 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4347826087 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.73913043478 5.70786347227 30% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.58057235199 0.218282227539 266% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.209453382714 0.0743258471296 282% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.174071398634 0.0701772020484 248% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.333429547305 0.128457276422 260% => Maybe some contents are duplicated.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.197260575509 0.0628817314937 314% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.3 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.8 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.5 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.