Read more about the discussion topics on Sunday's Melissa Harris-Perry.
They say you are what you eat, but as more of our food becomes genetically modified, we know increasingly less about what we are consuming. On Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Melissa will look at one of the nation’s biggest producers of GMOs: Monsanto. After a five-to-four Supreme Court decision in 1980 held that living organisms could be patented, Monsanto has become known as the “seed police” for aggressively enforcing the use of their genetically modified seeds. Get caught up on the lawsuit now in the Supreme Court that challenges those patent laws.
Since 2005, Monsanto has purchased top companies producing fruit, vegetable, cotton and soybean seeds. Those acquisitions have led to outcomes like Monsanto’s estimated 90% control of all soybean production in the nation. As the company has increased its share of the seed market, it has also raised concerns about the safety of the genetically modified crops they produce. That concern was only intensified when President Obama signed a continuing spending resolution that included a “Farmer Assurance Provision.”The provision mandates that federal courts cannot intervene in the planting or selling of GMOs, even if they have been deemed hazardous to the public. Join us at the top of the show as we ask: do we have any idea how safe genetically modified food actually is?
MHP will also be sharing insights from her latest book, Sister Citizen, and using them to ask if our understanding of immigration is gendered. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary addressed that question at a hearing on Monday titled “How Comprehensive Immigration Reform Should Address the Needs of Women and Families.”
If you loved NPR’s article “When Our Kids Own America,” you’ll want to check out the new memoirBirds of Paradise: How I Became Latina by Raquel Cepeda. The author will join the show to discuss culture, hip hop, and racial identity in America.
And with adoption in the headlines for the Supreme Court “Baby Girl” case, we’ll be asking Kathryn Joyce about a trend in adoption we don’t often hear about: the evangelical Christain adoption movement and its global impact on families, child trafficking, and our understanding of adoption.
Watch Melissa Harris-Perry Sunday at 10 AM ET on MSNBC.
