Last year, a woman was able to demonstrate that she contracted a bad

Last year, a woman was able to demonstrate that she contracted a bad case of food poisoning from a meal at one seafood restaurant in Tritonaville, and she successfully sued the restaurant for a large sum of money. The story was popular in the town, and the size of the financial settlement made the national news. Since that case, patronship at this and the ten other seafood restaurants in Tritonaville has remained high, and no other case of food poisoning has been documented at any of them. Nevertheless, some of the other seafood restaurants have experienced a severe drop in profits, so much so that one restaurant was forced to close. This is not surprising, though, because _____________.

Which of the following most logically completes the argument given?

(A) the restaurant market in Tritonaville is fiercely competitive with a large number of good restaurants of many cuisines, making it hard for all of them to remain solvent
(B) some of the cooking methods used for certain specific types of seafood food are less likely to kill germs than are the cooking methods used in most other cuisines
(C) national studies have indicated that, in the wake of a food poisoning scare, restaurant visits typically fall, especially at restaurants of the same cuisine as the original incident
(D) certain types of commercial fishing vessels can be considerably more unsanitary than most other commercial vessels responsible for food transport
(E) these eleven restaurants have incurred legal fees defending themselves against unfounded imitative claims