Now that you put it that way

My daughter is in advanced AP high school English, and occasionally she has me read an essay and see if I can what divine what kind of rhetoric the writer is employing. I like to think I'm a little more help to her with that subject than the Algebra problems she has stopped giving me, but that point is debatable.

Here is a link to an effective column on country of origin labeling.
The column is penned by Alan Geubert.

If you could save $1,000 on the purchase of a new car or truck because it did not have a shatterproof windshield and side glass, would you cut the deal?
Of course not; the safety of you and your family is priceless.


TK: Geubert sets up the straw man argument and then answers the question for you. It also poses a contingency; "Unless you desire your family to be sliced by shards of glass, you would obviously not agree to such a deal."

He then follows his point with a equivalency point of view about country of origin labeling.

Yet many ag businesses, farm groups and the federal government put a price on what you eat every day by promoting, lobbying and enacting food standards that do more to ensure their profits and your ignorance than provide public information and public safety.
Sometimes this price is as little as a penny per pound, the virtual nothingness researchers from five Land Grant institutions in 2003 estimated it would cost to implement country of origin labeling (COOL) for all food sold in the U.S.

TK: This guy is good. "Virtual nothingness" is classic. The ad hominem attack on those who resist mandatory country of origin labeling by attacking their greed doesn't acknowledge that consumers will pay the price.

More...

The silver bullet used by agbiz and their livestock allies to cripple COOL was - and remains - money: all complained it is too costly.
For example, a 2003 National Pork Producers Council-funded study concluded full implementation of COOL would cost producers $10.22 a head, drive down domestic consumer pork demand by 7 percent and slice U.S. pork exports 50 percent by 2010.
The study was a worse-case examination but it - and other gloomy reports by USDA and food lobbyists - had best-case results: COOL was shelved for most foods sold here.
But COOL is now moving again for several reasons.
First, the 2002 Farm Bill is undergoing a rewrite, and COOL proponents are again pushing Congress to make the law's implementation a priority in 2007. (So far, however, the anti-COOL giants appear to be winning this second round, too.)
Second, the pet food debacle - tainted Chinese wheat gluten in scores of U.S. dog and cat food brands - has again spotlighted the near powerlessness of under-funded, under-staffed and under-motivated U.S. food inspection agencies to keep tabs on the fast-moving, globalized food biz.

TK: "Globalized food biz" and "agbiz" apparently doesn't include Jack Q. Rancher, eking out a living in eastern Colorado. Well, rhetoric like Geubert is effective, partly because the public believes there is truth in it There is a sense that COOL shouldn't be that hard to deliver, so why all the resistance?

We are waiting for the always reliable device of the double blind question; Do you want mandatory country of origin labeling this year or next? Voluntary country of origin labeling is not a choice.