GMO Reflection

Before reading the articles, I had learned and researched some information about GMO’s. I had learned about them in my AP Human Geography Class during senior year where we had talked about how GMO’s were food that had been modified to increase crop yields since they can withstand certain weed killers and be less prone to certain diseases that crops can get. We talked about some of the pros of GMO’s in the class, but we also talked about the negativity surrounding them. My family also had stopped eating most foods that contained GMO’s a couple years ago after hearing that they weren’t safe to eat on the news. I’ve had a negative connotation of GMO’s ever since my family stopped eating them and talking about them in my APHG class solidified my negative feelings.

I felt like the response to the article was definitely biased because it was written by Robert Fraley, who is an executive at Monsanto Company, which promotes use of GMO’s through their seeds.[1] In the opinion, Fraley doesn’t talk very much about how people view GMO’s as negative and give facts about why he believes they are good, instead he mostly talked about why he believes they are important using facts.[2] This is a biased argument to me because since his company encourages the use of GMO’s, he wouldn’t want to talk negatively about GMO’s because this could discourage people from buying their products. I also felt like that the article by Hakim could have been influenced by his opinion because he wrote about how GMO’s were not as good for crop production as they are advertised as.[3] Even though he didn’t insert his opinion in the article, it could have influenced why he wrote about a negative side of GMO’s.

We have GMO’s to increase our crop yield in order to feed more people and create more food by making them be able to have certain capabilities.[4] One of the capabilities that GMO’s have is the ability to be sprayed by herbicides or have bugs on them and not be harmed.[5] One thing that I found to be surprising in Hakim’s article was that more dangerous chemicals are being used in weed killers, like dicamba and 2,4-D from Agent Orange.[6] This was so surprising to me because I feel like the food industry shouldn’t be using potentially harmful chemicals on food that millions of people are going to eat. If the use of the chemical goes wrong, it could put lots of lives in danger. One question that I have about GMO’s is: How many studies have actually been done to test the effects of them and how long-term have the studies been?

 

[1] Fraley, “Monsanto, on Genetically Modified Crops.”

[2] Fraley, “Monsanto, on Genetically Modified Crops.”

[3] Hakim, “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.”

[4] Hakim, “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.”

[5] Hakim, “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.”

[6]  Hakim, “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.”

 

Bibliography

Fraley, Robert T. “Monsanto, on Genetically Modified Crops.” The New York Times Company, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/opinion/monsanto-on-genetically-modified-crops.html (accessed September 23, 2018).

 

Hakim, Danny. “Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops.” The New York Times Company, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?_r=0&mtrref=undefined (accessed September 23, 2018).