cartoon vs. ad

Both the cartoon and ad are visual arguments, also known as implicit arguments. “Although seldom appearing by themselves without some accompanying text, photographs, drawings, political cartoons, and graphics can have an intense rhetorical impact. Visuals make strong emotional appeals, often reducing complex issues to one powerful perspective” (Writing Arguments, 37). The ad and cartoon are portraying the fact that the food we eat are genetically engineered. Genetically engineered and genetically modified are along the same lines, meaning that the crop, fruit, and meat providers are being controlled by unnatural products, such as “fillers”, or so they can survive for a certain amount of time, even through cold weather.
The cartoon is displaying a hungry child, who is starving and would take any kind of food, even corn. The bigger man, with the corn, is letting the hungry boy know that he didn’t want the corn because it was genetically modified and drought resistant. The corn may have been given some type of “filler” so they wouldn’t have to have water added to them.
The ad has a more verbal argument, but it is still visual with the picture of the can of vegetables saying “None of Your Business”. “There is no label for genetically engineered foods, and no way for consumers to know whether the food they eat contains them” (Writing Arguments, 24). The ad states that up to 70% of our foods have genetically engineered add-ins. The ad is persuaving us, consumers, to join them when asking the Food and Drug Administration about regulating genetically engineered foods, also known as “GE foods”. They would like for us to get the Food and Drug Administration about requiring some mandatory labeling and safety testing of all of the foods we eat.