UNSEEN PROSE AND POETRY Read the passage below ... - WAEC Literature 2001 Question

UNSEEN PROSE AND POETRY
Read the passage below and answer the question

The killing of a whale at sea isn't pleasant to witness or even to contemplate. Hunted down through solar and other highly specialized equipment, the whale has no more chance of escape like a steer in a slaughterhouse. The manner of his death, however, is very different. A grenade-tipped harpoon explodes deep within his body, often causing prolonged suffering before the gentle-giant, whose intelligence may be second only to our own, is reduced to a carcass ready for processing into crayons, lipstick, shoe polish, fertilizer, margarine and pet food.
The inhumane manner of death, however, is the least part of the scandal known as the whaling industry. Much more important is the fact that the killing is quite unnecessary. Adeguate substitutes exist for every single use to which the whale carcasses are currently put, and although some 32,000 whales are killed every year, the sum of commodities are provide is insignificant in the world's economy.

The underlined expression suggests that the writer