Page 471 - Essencials of Sociology

444 CHAPTER 14 Population and Urbanization

Down-to-Earth Sociology

BioFoods: What’s in Your Future?

L uddites are all around us. They oppose anything new. growths were large enough to block the rats’ breathing and
digestion. The rats’ kidneys and livers were also damaged.
They can’t stand change.
You can expect the Luddites to complain about bio-
engineered foods. Biofoods, also called genetically modified Their sex hormones were also disturbed. And female rats
tended to come down with breast tumors.
organisms (GMOs), are a radical departure from the past. With such damage to essential organs and functioning,
Until a few years ago, biofoods were just a gleam in the eyes the death rate of the experimental group was two to three
of scientists. They experimented and came up with seeds that times higher than that of the control group. The researchers
vastly increased harvests. Good enough. suggest that the GMO corn disturbs the
Then they came up with seeds that could subnuclear structure of body cells.
withstand drought. Then seeds whose There’s a lot at stake—billions of dollars.
added genetic materials could even pro- You can be sure that Monsanto and other
duce insecticides. companies are doing research to try to
Crops kept increasing. And the Lud- disprove this study. They will not report
dites kept shouting warnings about research that shows that GMOs are
contaminating nature, about humans harmful. The law doesn’t require it. If
playing God. Scientists and the public they have positive results from some
shrugged them off. And Monsanto and sample, however, you can be sure that the
the other agricultural conglomerates media will trumpet them—especially the
kept doing their research, developing media in which these companies pay for
new seeds that would allow the worlds’ expensive ads.
population—and their profits—to keep This research touched an exposed
growing. nerve, and criticism and defense have
But a little matter seems to have flown fast and furious (Bardocz et al. 2012;
popped up. Scientists love to test things, Butler 2012). After the dust settles, we
just about anything. Now that we have can see what future researchers come up
genetically modified plants, they are with. I am referring to objective scientists
testing them. The first tests were not whose own research has not been funded
conclusive, and scientists called for more by the agricultural companies.
tests. We now have the results of the first In the meantime, no GMO for me. My
research on rats that were fed GMO corn wife looked at the photo as I was writing
all of their lives. this box.
The photo to the right shows one of the
rats in the study. This is not a pretty sight. For Your Consideration
Basically, the researchers divided
the rats into control and experimental One of the rats in the research reported here. ↑ How do you think we can make our
groups (Seralini et al. 2012). The control food safe? Do you think companies
group was fed non-GMO corn, while should be required to put labels on food
the experimental group ate only GMO corn. Compared with that informs the consumer if the product contains GMO
the control group, a lot of the rats in the experimental group plants? Do you think all research on GMOs should be re-
came down with tumors. Like the tumors in the photo, some quired to be posted to a centralized site?

If the Earth is so productive, then why do people die of hunger? Look again at Figure
14.4 on the next page. You can see that people don’t starve because the Earth produces
too little food. The reason people starve is that particular places lack food. Droughts and
wars are the main reasons. Just as droughts slow or stop food production, so does war.
In nations ravaged by civil war, opposing sides confiscate and burn crops, and farmers
flee to the cities (Thurow 2005; Gettleman 2009).
The New Malthusians counter with the argument that the world’s population is still
growing and that we don’t know how long Earth will continue to produce enough
food. They add that the recent policy of turning food (such as corn and sugar cane)
into biofuels (such as gasoline and diesel) is short-sighted, posing a serious threat to the
world’s food supply. A bushel of corn that goes into someone’s gas tank is a bushel of corn
that does not go on people’s dinner plates.