With a better quality of life, people now begin to concern more about the effectiveness of the current food system, and whether doing everything we can to get as much food as we can is really the best for us in a long term. Birke Baehr, an 11-year-old boy, gave a speech on TED titled “What’s wrong with our food system” due to his passion for a healthy food system for both human beings and the animals. He effectively argued that our food system right now is not in its ideal state, because the sale-oriented marketing and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are ruining the health of the farmed animals and that of people’s. Baehr starts off his speech by stating that the marketing of food can easily attract kids no matter how
…show more content…
As an 11-year-old boy, Baehr cannot use complex and scientific language to accurately describe GMOs, but his own words are just enough for all of his listeners, especially those who have limited knowledge in science, to understand his points easily. For instance, he gave the example of the genetically engineered tomatoes with a fish gene in it. When he says, “Yuck. Don't get me wrong, I like fish and tomatoes, but this is just creepy”, all of the audiences would laugh because they think the same way as Baehr does that this idea is strange and unbelievable, so it should not exist. In the same part of his speech, Baehr also aroused the audience's anger to GMOs when he pointed out that “most folks don't even know [GMOs] exist” since 1990s. GMO is not a brand new technology and it is used for almost all corns we have today, but the fact that many people are not aware of it means that the sellers of the products are intentionally hiding what GMO may do to human bodies. Baehr uses the rhetorical question “Did you know rats that ate genetically engineered corn had developed signs of liver and kidney toxicity?” to reveal the possible bad effects of GMO. The question challenges audience’s knowledge of GMO and warns them to stay away from it. Here, Baehr successfully proved to his audiences that GMOs are indeed weird and bad for people by using non-scientific
As an 11-year-old boy, Baehr cannot use complex and scientific language to accurately describe GMOs, but his own words are just enough for all of his listeners, especially those who have limited knowledge in science, to understand his points easily. For instance, he gave the example of the genetically engineered tomatoes with a fish gene in it. When he says, “Yuck. Don't get me wrong, I like fish and tomatoes, but this is just creepy”, all of the audiences would laugh because they think the same way as Baehr does that this idea is strange and unbelievable, so it should not exist. In the same part of his speech, Baehr also aroused the audience's anger to GMOs when he pointed out that “most folks don't even know [GMOs] exist” since 1990s. GMO is not a brand new technology and it is used for almost all corns we have today, but the fact that many people are not aware of it means that the sellers of the products are intentionally hiding what GMO may do to human bodies. Baehr uses the rhetorical question “Did you know rats that ate genetically engineered corn had developed signs of liver and kidney toxicity?” to reveal the possible bad effects of GMO. The question challenges audience’s knowledge of GMO and warns them to stay away from it. Here, Baehr successfully proved to his audiences that GMOs are indeed weird and bad for people by using non-scientific