Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1 to 8.
Reports of acute foodborne illness originating from institutional catering facilities have become alarmingly frequent in recent months. Hundreds of individuals, often students or factory employees, simultaneously suffer debilitating gastrointestinal distress after consuming a single shared meal. The sheer scale of these incidents reveals a critical vulnerability within the modern industrial nutrition system. Preparation of sustenance for thousands requires complex logistical undertakings that routinely prioritize cost efficiency and speed over rigorous hygiene protocols or ingredient quality.
Tracing the provenance of raw materials in these large-scale enterprises proves notoriously difficult. Contractors operate on marginal profits and often procure ingredients from the lowest bidder without adequate scrutiny or quality assurance. A single contaminated batch of produce or meat can be distributed across multiple venues before authorities identify the pathogen. The fragmentation of the supply chain means that legal culpability is often obfuscated among numerous intermediaries. The economic model inherently incentivizes the purchase of substandard ingredients to maximize profit margins.
Regulatory enforcement mechanisms currently in place appear largely reactive rather than preventative. Oversight bodies lack the personnel to enforce stringent sanitary standards across the proliferation of semi-regulated kitchens supplying these contracts. Official inspections are regularly perfunctory or scheduled in advance, allowing proprietors to temporarily conceal sanitary deficiencies. The monetary penalties for non-compliance are typically negligible compared to the financial gains secured by circumventing safety regulations. Offending entities frequently view such fines as a minor operational expense. They explicitly calculate that the financial cost of halting operations to address safety concerns far exceeds the burden of any potential penalty.
Public confidence in the safety of institutional dining is rapidly deteriorating. Parents and workers now view provided meals with justifiable suspicion rather than gratitude. The recurrence of these preventable health crises indicates a systemic failure to favor human well-being over commercial expediency. Ensuring the integrity of the mass food supply requires a fundamental overhaul of how these catering contracts are awarded and monitored. Without strictly enforced accountability, the communal meal remains a latent public health hazard, causing significant anxiety.
(Adapted from MDPI)
Question 1: The word debilitating in paragraph 1 is OPPOSITE in meaning to ______.
A. crippling B. strengthening C. painful D. contagious
