Genetically Modified Foods By Michael Pollan

It is ten o’clock in the morning when Michael Pollan takes the stage of Wheeler Auditorium at the University of California-Berkeley for his Global Sustainability class, where he scans the room to look into the eyes of 700 students, an impressive feat for any professor with an early lecture. The students are about what you would expect from a high-achieving university - eager and intelligent, all looking to make the food industry more sustainable. Upon Pollan’s invitation, Pam Ronald, a slight in stature, but profoundly influential plant geneticist, steps on stage to make a case for genetically modified foods, though Pollan himself has been a “vocal skeptic” of GMOs (Little 1). He introduces her to his group of sustainability, organic-food advocates saying,“if anyone can make a case for GMOs, it’s Pam Ronald,” a magnanimous, but daunting welcome. After Ronald’s introduction to her research and background information on GMOs, Ronald and Pollan debate the hackneyed, yet relevant GMO contention. Their debate can be categorized as passionate, but cordial, punctuated with high, shrill notes and tension as well as good-humored bantering. Ronald notes, “Mike and I can be friends despite our vast discrepancies because we both have the same goal - to provide food in a sustainable way without the use of pesticides or herbicides.” At the end of the day, it was not clear how many students Ronald had managed to convince of the relative altruism of GMOs (Little). It can be said, …show more content…
Why is there such tremendous resistance from the public to accept GMOs? The media can be partially to blame. With fallacious portrayals of the mechanisms and effects of genetic modification, the media has an indelible rhetorical skill every scientist envies. By consistently reporting on exclusively the inadequacies of genetic modification, the media fails us in what its sole purpose is to do - to inform accurately and critically (Wilce