问题
单项选择题
Passage Three
| A chain of shops in East Yorkshire, England has been told that it would be a criminal offence to sell thousands of tubes of toothpaste made by a leading French manufacturer simply because the small print giving the firm importing it does not include the letters "UK". Under cosmetics regulations implementing 25 separate European Union instructions, unless the address is London, which is "a major city", the letters UK must be added. The suppliers response, when Gordon Rodgers’s A2Z chain asked them to take back the toothpaste, was that this would pose no problem, because trading standards officials elsewhere in Britain do not bother about such fault-finding to a very minute detail. A2Z, which sells a range of more than 10 000 household items from its 14 discount stores in Hull and East Yorkshire, first stumbled into these mysterious requirements of cosmetic labelling when summoned by East Yorkshire trading standards officials on a criminal charge of selling tubes of the same brand of toothpaste, Mentadent, designed for the South African market. These carried the name of a German distributor but no UK supplier. The council had no complaint about the toothpaste itself. It is common and legal practice for supermarkets and discount stores to buy up a wide range of branded products packaged by leading European and American manufacturers for non-EU markets. These can then be sold at prices lower than those recommended for identical products in Europe, which are only more expensive because EU consumers can supposedly afford to pay more. Council officials were quick to point out that they support the contribution this gray economy makes to "healthy competition". The only problem was that importers’ details must be given by the regulation formula. For a major city such as London only a postcode is necessary, but for other cities and towns the letters UK must be added. When A2Z asked how it was expected to examine the small print on the labelling of each of 10 000 products it carries, East Yorkshire replied that it was up to the firm to improve the quality of their inspection procedures. A2Z then supplied the council three weeks running with examples of similar products carrying "illegal labelling", bought from major supermarkets in the same area, asking why these large firms were not also prosecuted. The council said it "did not have the resources" to chase up every case of illegality, to which Mr. Rodgers responded that he "did not have the resources" to improve the quality of their inspection procedures, which the council was asking of him. Last week his firm’s case was adjourned. |
Why did Gordon Rodgers’s A2Z chain have trouble with East Yorkshire Council
A．They sold fake product.
B．They sold stolen goods.
C．The product they sold was incorrectly labelled.
D．They were not licensed to sell this product.
答案
参考答案：C
解析：细节题。本题要求考生识别为什么Gordon Rodgers的A2Z连锁店会和东约克郡地方议会发生麻烦。文章第一段说，这家连锁店被告知，卖这些牙膏是违法的，原因是牙膏上所标的进口公司的名称没有“UK”两个字母。第二段又说，这家连锁店第一次在化妆品标签的要求上碰到麻烦的时候，是因为被控销售为南非市场生产的Mentadent牌牙膏，而这些牙膏没有标明英国供货商的名称。最后一段说了A2Z和地方议会之间的争论，问题集中在如何能检查上万个商品的标签及为什么销售同类带有“不合法标签”的大超市没有受到起诉。由此可见，本题的答案是C他们销售标签标得不正确的产品。D不对，因为能否销售这些产品取决于其标签内容是否合乎要求，而不是是否有销售许可。A和B均不符合文章内容。