Rhetorical Analysis: Beyond GMO labeling
As technologies are increasingly benefiting the industry of agriculture, general publics
are getting familiar with the term of genetically modified organisms. GMOs (genetically
modified organisms) are defined as organisms that are altered by genetic engineering or that use
genetically modified materials from other organisms. In the market place, more and more
customers are caring about GMO labeling on the food products they buy; however, new
technologies such as genome-editing are making the boundaries of GMO regulation indistinct
since genome-editing techniques modify crops without inserting any transgene from others (Ishii
and Araki 1). Popular article “Regulating genome-edited crops that (according to current
regulations) aren't GMOs” published by Cell Press references to an academic essay titled
“Towards social acceptance of plant breeding by genome editing” written by bioethicists
professor Tetsuya Ishii and Motoko Araki from Hokkaido University. These two articles both
call for new policies added to GMO labeling and acknowledge the consumers about the
containing of these genome-edited indigents in food products (Ishii and Araki 1). In the original
academic essay, Ishii and Araki use scientific terms to discuss the necessity of creating new
policies of GMO labeling in great detail and provides possible solutions, while the popular one
acts more like acknowledging the general public about how Professor Ishii and Araki’s research
relate to our lives in a way that normal readers can easily understand the main issues from the
academic article (Ishii and Araki 1). By comparing rhetoric aspects such as purpose, audiences,
and organization between the two articles, overall this popular article partially represents some
main claims from the academic research, but it only stays on the surface level and does not
continue to discuss further points from the original research; therefore, this popular article tends
to introduce the source to its readers and encourages them to read the original academic essay.
Since both articles stay on basically a same task, which is to encourage the audiences to
raise the awareness of genome-edited products to change regulated policies of GMO labeling,
their purposes are partially identical as well. In the popular article, the author directly introduces
Dr. Ishii and Araki’s proposals:
The most stringent regulation should be initially adopted and gradually relaxed because
the
cultivation and food consumption of genome-edited crops is likely to increase in the near
future (Ishii
and Araki 1).
The writer from Cell Press inserts this entire quote from the academic essay into the popular
article for introducing the original essay, but he or she fails to recapitulate another important
purpose from Professor Ishii and Araki’s article. Adding on to the main arguement, the original
essay also discusses “the future integration of genome-editing crops into society, specifically a
possible response to the ‘Right to Know’ movement which demands labeling of food that
contains genetically engineered ingredients” in the second to the last section of this article, which
the popular one does not include (Ishii and Araki 1). According to ishii and Araki, the “Right to
know” action gives customers the rights to see every ingredient from labeling, and this is a hard
rule that requires all companies listing out GMO ingredients used in the product. In this case,
since genome-edited crops are not GMOs, companies may not choose to list them out due to the
existing policies that only apply to GMOs, but Ishii and Araki think customers should also have
the right to know if their food contains genome-edited ingredients (Ishii and Araki 1). However
in the popular article, the author does not mention the importance of following the “Right to
know” movement, which misrepresents one of Ishii and Araki’s points that it is necessary to
make changes in GMO labeling policies due to the unclear regulations on labelling created by
the “Right to know” action.
The reason that the popular article does not include every argument from the academic
one is because the difference of their targeted groups of audience. As the popular article aims to
introduce the original source to more people, its audiences are most likely the general publics
who are not familiar with the relationship between genome-edited crops and GMOs and people
who care about GMO labeling on their food product but had never heard of Ishii and Araki’s
opinions before. There is a great difference of the use of personal pronouns in an popular article
and an academic one. Since Although there is no significant phrases addressing to the audiences
in both of the writings, the popular essay uses “they discuss” or “in their study” referencing to
Doctor Ishii and Araki, and these two professors mentions “we” as themselves, “the society”,
and “breeders and consumers” in their paper (Cell Press 2015, Ishii and Araki 1-5). From these
phrases and pronouns, the popular article is always representing the ideas from the original essay,
and the academic one presents the authors’ opinions to their peer researchers, people in charge of
examining GMO labeling policies, and consumers or farmers. To some degree, these two articles
share a certain percent of the same audience group, but there are more people from the general
public than professional researchers who read the popular one than those who read the original
essay. The difference of genre choice of these two articles can be another cause of the slight
distinct of audience group. Professor Ishii and Araki’s article strictly follows the format of an
academic paper with clear purpose and a long list of supported evidence, while the popular
article only cites the academic essay and it is an online journal that is open access to the general
public.
Due to their different choices of genres, the overall design of the articles and used in
these two articles also varies. Compare to the academic paper, the popular one is shorter, and it
basically divides the body into paragraphs with a quote from the original essay and a following
paragraph of a brief explanation or summarization of Professor Ishii and Araki’s purpose. No
self-opinion from the writer is found in this essay, and the arguments are all adapted from the
original sources. The language used in these two articles have a significant difference. Although
the popular article still uses some academic terms as “ZFN, TALEN, and CRISPR/Cas9” for
clarifying types of advanced genetic engineering technologies, the overall language is
understandable to normal readers and to those who are not familiar with scientific terms (Cell
Press 1). In the academic paper, many formal vocabularies that commonly appear in science
journal like “extracellular”, “homologous”, and “polymorphism” are used (Ishii and Araki 1-3).
On the structural level, the academic article deeply examines the necessary of “regulatory models”
and provides possible proposals of models on existing genome-edited crops in detail, which the
popular article only summarizes into “four regulatory models in order to resolve the indistinct
regulatory boundaries that genome editing has created in GMO regulations” (Cell Press 1).
Additionally, the academic article provides several graphics land charts like “examples of
reported genome-editing-mediated gene modifications in major crops” to support its argument by
listing out several types of existing genome-edited crops and their relevant data (Ishii and Araki
2). Lastly, the academic paper offers a list of formal referenced sources, which are not used in
the popular article.
Comparing the rhetorical devices that these two articles use, they show that the original
academic article precisely and accurately presents authors Ishii and Araki’s opinion to their
audience by following the formal structure of an academic research paper and by using strong
evidences from previous study, and the popular one only adequately represents some parts of the
academic research but not the integrated content. However, the popular article aims to introduce
Ishii and Araki’s article and their opinion to its own readers who are not professional scientists of
researching GMO or genome-edited crops. As readers of both articles, we should care about the
topic because GMO labeling is important to our own health. There has not been any specific
negative effect of GMO foods on human body that has been tested, but many scientists argue that
eating a certain amount of GMO food may possibly cause serious diseases. GMO labeling is a
standard for making the food ingredient containing visible for the customers, so it is necessary
for us as customers to care about listing all the modified ingredients in products we buy,
including genome-edited crops.
References:
n.d. "Regulating Genome-edited Crops That (according to Current Regulations) Aren't GMOs."
Http://www.eurekalert.org/. Cell Press, 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.
Araki, Motoko, and Tetsuya Ishii. "Towards Social Acceptance of Plant Breeding by Genome
Editing."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1360138515000291#. Trends in
Plant Science. 25
Feb. 2015. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.