Bad as it is, the Flint drinking water disaster is hardly uncommon. Even though the law requires authorities to tell the public of dangerous levels of lead in drinking water, they often don't.
If the water coming from your tap is unfit to drink, you have a right to know. But the crisis in Flint, Michigan, is challenging that assumption. Meanwhile, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (pictured) apologized to the residents of Flint, and "pledged to promptly release his emails about the issue," according to the New York Times.
"The World Health Organization declared on Thursday the end to the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, which killed and sickened tens of thousands of people in West Africa, even as it cautioned that more flare-ups of the disease were likely."
"In the first slate of nutritional recommendations it has issued since 2011, the federal government on Thursday gave health-conscious Americans the go-ahead to eat eggs and others foods rich in cholesterol, to drink as many as five cups of coffee daily, and to enjoy a range of fats long avoided by many."
Do consumers have a right to know where their food comes from? What if there is a federal law decreeing that they have that right? Not anymore. None of that matters. International trade treaties — nowadays often negotiated in secret — trump United States law aimed at protecting consumers.
"At least 600 million people, or 1 in 10 worldwide, fall ill from contaminated food each year and 420,000 die, many of them young children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday."
Reporters trying to get information from federal agencies find press offices stonewalling and running out the clock on their interview requests. "The public information model," one agency flak said, "is dead." The result: the public is uninformed, the government is unaccountable, and people's health is endangered.
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