This is because the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) has made the decision that people don't need to know about these things and they have decided not to put labels on foods to let people know that they were made with New Leafs. The New Leafs, in fact, are .
part of a new class of crop plants that is rapidly changing the American food chain. This year, the fourth year that genetically altered seed has been on the market, some 45 million acres of American farmland have been planted with biotech crops, most of it corn, soybeans, cotton and potatoes that have been engineered to either produce their own pesticides or withstand herbicides. (Pollan 506).
What Pollan is saying by this is that since there is such a large amount of farmland with biotech crops planted within them that there's no way of telling if people have already eaten them or not. There are too many biotech crops out there to individually pick out which foods do and do not contain these New Leafs. The protestors of the New Leaf Superiors should not be protesting until they know for sure that they have not already eaten a genetically engineered potato. As of now, they don't know, and it may be a long time until they find out or until the F.D.A. decides to put identifying labels on biotech foods. So until then, there is nothing to protest about. .
Gould, in his essay, "What Does the Dreaded E' Word Mean Anyway?- talks about Darwin's evolutionary theory and what he had called "survival of the fittest."" According to Darwin, "evolutionary development involves progress toward perfection- (Gould 322). This relates to human development, because that's what all humans strive for: perfection. A good example of this "perfection- is the New Leaf potato. Since, as stated earlier, the true meaning of the word "evolution- is "the sequential exposure of prepackaged potential,"" the development of the New Leaf Superior proves just how much potential that we as humans have.
