Summary Of The Botany Of Desire By Michael Pollan

In the book, The Botany of Desire, the author Michael Pollan describes the relationship between human and potatoes. After discussing the history of potatoes and the famine in Ireland, he relatively focused on the genetic engineering of the potatoes. The famous seed industry, Monsanto, have change the genes of potatoes by adding some genes of Bacillus Turingiensis(Bt) into the potato to make anti-biotic potatoes. One interesting thing is that Monsanto has the patent of new plants, and if farmers keep their potatoes more than one year, they are literally breaking the law and will get punished. Pollan talked about his experiences of invited this kind of potatoes to others and got rejected. People do not believe that a potato with the genes of a pesticide from microorganisms. Also, as the person who grew the “Newleaf” potato, Pollan didn’t eat what he grew for a long time either. At that time, some people held the idea that it is dangerous to eat transgenetic vegetable food. Indeed, there was no proof that the potatoes are safe after using the genes of Bt. Since it is one kind of pesticide instead of vegetable, the 那个环保机构said that they are responsible for the vegetables rather than pesticide, so they can not guaranteed the quality of the potatoes. Also, …show more content…
Like Pollan described in this book, people either fully agree with eating them or resist it. 2 extreme side occur and tons of head-lined news discuss about the advantages and disadvantages about them. However, it seems that people gradually accepted them. Some ideas like eating transgenetic food will lead to cancer or make deep effect to our bodies were believed at that period of time. However, many appropriate authority did not make clarification of that so until now there are still many misunderstanding among us. Further more, Science did not find out some of the effects after eating transgenetic food, so there are still many mysteries of