Student Name:

The Big Question:

Considering both points of view, does one sides argument outweigh the others?

Debate Preparation: You will participate in a collaborative

discussion, or debate. On Tuesday, March 1, each student must come to the
discussion prepared with written responses to each of the four questions
below.

Use your Benefits & Concerns research

notes (Google doc) & SQWORL resources http://sqworl.com/vbe0ea to
help guide you.

Include CITATIONS (quoted text from

articles, websites, etc.) as evidence of your claims.

Use the argumentative sentence stems &

transitions (last page) to create strong claims.

Be prepared to argue both sides (Pro or

Con) of Genetically Modified Foods.
Color-Coding: Use the following color-codes for the argument writing
essentials:
Claims (a statement that can be argued and proven with
evidence)
Citations (quoted evidence from another source)
Statistics (facts with numbers based on data collection)
Commenting: Identify in your own writing when you appeal to each
persuasive technique. Instead of color-coding, use the COMMENT button.
Ethos (Credibility, Reputation, Citing from a university
study, etc.)
Logos (Using Logic, Facts, Statistics, Reason, etc.)

etc.)

Pathos (Appealing to Emotions, Imagination, Feelings, Fear,

Answer each question in a detailed paragraph(s) using the directions on page 1:

1.
Considering both points of view (Benefits & Concerns of GMOs), how
does each sides argument outweigh the others?

If I were arguing for the benefits of GMOs, two claims I have are that
GMO foods can help with producing more foods without having them
being killed by pesticides and GMO foods can be cheaper so more people
can afford to buy them. Farmers slave away putting pesticides on their
crops to keep insects even though they are killing some of their crops.
Can you imagine being out in a hot field, sweating, and destroying half of
your work while trying to help it? This is how the farmers feel when
putting on the pesticide. With GMO foods that are insect resistant, the
pesticide wont have to be put on and more food will be produced. Eco
Tipping Points states, Farmers worldwide use more than two million tons
of chemical pesticides each year. Many of the pesticides, which are
manufactured from petroleum, kill insects that eat the crops. Those
pesticides seem essential for preventing serious crop losses, but there
are equally serious questions about how much we really benefit from
their use. After all, pesticides are poisons. They can contaminate our
food, endangering our health in ways that we are not even aware of.
With GMO foods, all this will be eliminated. Less pesticides used, and less
manual labor.
If I were arguing for the concerns of GMOs, two main claims I have are,
GMO foods can cause allergies if an unknown allergen is inserted into the
food and GMO foods are not labeled, so how do we know what is in them?
The Non GMO Project states, Unfortunately, even though polls
consistently show that a significant majority of Americans want to know if
the food theyre purchasing contains GMOs, the powerful biotech lobby
has succeeded in keeping this information from the public. We all want
to know what we are eating. 90% of moms and 88% of dads want to our
food to be labeled with whether it contains GMO ingredients. If a child is
allergic to soy and they eat a cracker that does not list soy as an
ingredient, but is a GM food and has soy genes in it, that child could
experience an allergic reaction that could be life threatening.
Overall, I believe that the benefits outweigh the concerns because they
help us a lot more than they hurt us.

2.
If you were the President of the United States with a struggling
economy, high obesity, and overpopulation, would you encourage more GMO production or
restrict it?

If I were the President of the United States, I would encourage GMO

foods for many reasons. If a certain state is struggling from
blindness like Africa, I could give them golden rice and solve a big
problem. If I banned GMO foods, people who need them to survive
could get mad and it would be a lot bigger issue than promoting
them and having people choose whether to buy them or not. In
Support of GMO Crops states, While hunger has increased in some
parts of the world because of factors like drought, the modern
bounty of American agriculture, where over 90% of corn and
soybeans are the results of genetic engineering, feeds the world.

3.
Considering GMO foods you have researched, which do you believe is
most beneficial (helpful) to a civilization and why?

I believe that the most beneficial GMO food is corn. I believe this
because we use corn in so many of our food products like taco
shells, tortillas, salads and more. Without GMO corn, we would be
working with a plant that is about the size of a weed. Now with this
GMO corn, we can have lots of different products that we enjoy
today. I think that GMO corn is most useful in the US and Mexico
because of the amount of corn products we use. Originally cultivated
in Mexico 7,000 years ago,corn is now America's biggest crop and a
staple of the global food supply.

4.
civilization and why?

Which GMO foods do you believe is most detrimental (harmful) to a

I believe that the most detrimental GMO food to a civilization is GMO

soy. Although I eat product with GMO soy almost everyday, there is
such a big concern that it could carry a gene that someone is
allergic to. If someone eats a bowl of pasta with a topping that
contains GMO soy, if there is an allergen in that topping, the
consumer could get quite sick and could file a lawsuit. That could
cause companies to go out of business. Wikipedia states, In 2014,
90.7 million hectares of GM soy were planted worldwide, 82% of the
total soy cultivation area.