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Occasionally had members that have been roundly censured in the national press.

I tried to make this sentence simple to understand. Like this,

"Had members that have been censured."

If I could remove 'had' and 'that', it would be "members have been censured." I can understand this sentence. But I'm pretty sure I cannot omit them. They look essential components in this sentence.

If so, I cannot even find what is a verb of this sentence.

"Had members that have been censured."

What is the "had" and "that"???

The whole article link is here (the sentence is the first sentence in 5th paragraph) : http://www.ielts-mentor.com/reading-sample/academic-reading/28-ielts-academic-reading-sample-3-zoo-conservation-programmes

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    It's an incomplete sentence that makes no sense.
    – Khan
    Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 4:42
  • Try to supply context for the sentence. It may be a sentence fragment whose function is a dependent clause, but we can't know unless you post the paragraph it appears in.
    – Robusto
    Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 4:50
  • @Robusto Sorry. I linked the whole article.
    – Ting Choe
    Commented Feb 8, 2017 at 5:03

1 Answer 1

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The article has a "bug", namely a very obvious incorrect paragraph break:

(...) The greatly respected American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAZPA) has had extremely dubious members, and in the UK the Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland has

Occasionally had members that have been roundly censured in the national press. These include Robin Hill Adventure Park on the Isle of Wight, which many considered the most notorious collection of animals (...)

Remove the capitalization of "Occasionally" and merge the fragments, you get a long-yet-comprehensible sentence:

The greatly respected American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AAZPA) has had extremely dubious members, and in the UK the Federation of Zoological Gardens of Great Britain and Ireland has occasionally had members that have been roundly censured in the national press.

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