The Flint Michigan Water Crisis

Each year, 48 million food and water borne illnesses will sicken the United States inhabitants, and an additional 3,000 people will die from those illnesses. Food and water safety is crucial to the public because it directly affects people’s health, and without good hygiene diseases will spread quickly. It is also important to point out that many people live in conditions where they do not have access to resources necessary for human survival, and these are the ones that need the most assistance. For many, it is due to the carelessness of food and water distributors and lack of government intervention. For example, the Flint Michigan Water Crisis, a completely preventable occurrence. Due to negligence of state regulation of water, people have

Furthermore, if there was more government intervention, there wouldn’t be consumer crises to begin with. Since consumer crises are a growing issue, it is important that the government takes necessary action to make it a declining one. “The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that trans fats pose major health risks, and the FDA estimates that a ban could prevent 7,000 deaths and 20,000 heart attacks every year” (Filipovic). This shows how reluctant the government is to intervene because despite the clear negative effects of trans fat, it is still widely distributed within the food industry. Additionally, the government generally pushes forward a more individualist approach to food and water safety, which most people contend that it should instead be more systematic. The Obama administration actively promotes the food safety, but fails to advertise effectively against the negative aspects of relations that involving food safety. A more recent and especially important example of poor and bereft government assistance is the aforementioned Flint Michigan water crisis. Governor, Rick Snyder of Michigan and his personally appointed mayor and city council decided to change the water source of Flint from the clean Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River, all to save money. The governor’s office eventually found out how toxic

The most evident and generalized solution is more government intervention with our food and water supply. Since the government is the most prominent proprietor of the nation it is only natural that the ideals and institutions that govern it should be the one that makes sure that people have access to safe food and water. However, when the government takes appropriate action there are things that must accommodate it for success. For water safety alone there are a variety of problem solvers including, reservoir funding, desalination, and water meters (Barford, Everett). Reservoir funding is an effective solution because if we spend billions on reservoirs we then have tons of alternate resources if one resources gets contaminated or deficient. Additionally, desalination; the removal of salt from salt water, is surefire way to stop a water crisis because the ocean has tons upon tons of water that we can use once its toxic salt is removed. Lastly another solution to water crises are water meters. “Using meters to monitor just how much water people are sending down drains, flushing in toilets and pouring over gardens promises to cut consumption, according to some experts” (Barford, Everett). On the other hand, the predominantly accepted solution for food crises are the use of more GMOs which stands for genetically modified organism. The author of