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Jacki Schilke
This cow on Jacki Schilke's ranch in northeast North Dakota lost most of its tail, one of many ailments that afflicted her cattle after hydrofracturing, or fracking, began in the nearby Bakken Shale.
In the midst of the domestic energy boom, livestock on farms near oil- and gas-drilling operations nationwide have been quietly falling sick and dying. While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or “fracking”) operations are poisoning animals through the air, water or soil.
Earlier this year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, N.Y., veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first and only peer-reviewed report to suggest a link between fracking and illness in food animals.
The authors compiled 24 case studies of farmers in six shale-gas states whose livestock experienced neurological, reproductive and acute gastrointestinal problems after being exposed — either accidentally or incidentally — to fracking chemicals in the water or air. The article, published in “New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health,” describes how scores of animals died over the course of several years. Fracking industry proponents challenged the study, since the authors neither identified the farmers nor ran controlled experiments to determine how specific fracking compounds might affect livestock.
The death toll is insignificant when measured against the nation’s livestock population (some 97 million beef cattle go to market each year), but environmental advocates believe these animals constitute an early warning.
Exposed livestock “are making their way into the food system, and it’s very worrisome to us,” Bamberger said. “They live in areas that have tested positive for air, water and soil contamination. Some of these chemicals could appear in milk and meat products made from these animals.”
In Louisiana, 17 cows died after an hour’s exposure to spilled fracking fluid, which is injected miles underground to crack open and release pockets of natural gas. The most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.
In New Mexico, hair testing of sick cattle that grazed near well pads found petroleum residues in 54 of 56 animals.
In northern central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately 70 cows died, and the remainder produced only 11 calves, of which three survived.
In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing wastewater pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: Half their calves were born dead. Dairy operators in shale-gas areas of Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas have also reported the death of goats exposed to fracking chemicals.
Drilling and fracking a single well requires up to 7 million gallons of water, plus an additional 400,000 gallons of additives, including lubricants, biocides, scale- and rust-inhibitors, solvents, foaming and defoaming agents, emulsifiers and de-emulsifiers, stabilizers and breakers. At almost every stage of developing and operating an oil or gas well, chemicals and compounds can be introduced into the environment.
Cows lose weight, die
After drilling began just over the property line of Jacki Schilke’s ranch in the northwestern corner of North Dakota in 2009, in the heart of the state’s booming Bakken Shale, cattle began limping, with swollen legs and infections. Cows quit producing milk for their calves, they lost from 60 to 80 pounds in a week and their tails mysteriously dropped off. Eventually, five animals died, according to Schilke.
Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene and xylene -- and well testing revealed high levels of sulfates, chromium, chloride and strontium. Schilke says she moved her herd upwind and upstream from the nearest drill pad.
Although her steers currently look healthy, she said, “I won’t sell them because I don’t know if they’re OK.”
Nor does anyone else. Energy companies are exempt from key provisions of environmental laws, which makes it difficult for scientists and citizens to learn precisely what is in drilling and fracking fluids or airborne emissions. And without information on the interactions between these chemicals and pre-existing environmental chemicals, veterinarians can’t hope to pinpoint an animal’s cause of death.
The risks to food safety may be even more difficult to parse, since different plants and animals take up different chemicals through different pathways.
“There are a variety of organic compounds, metals and radioactive material (released in the fracking process) that are of human health concern when livestock meat or milk is ingested,” said Motoko Mukai, a veterinary toxicologist at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine. These “compounds accumulate in the fat and are excreted into milk. Some compounds are persistent and do not get metabolized easily.”
Jacki Schilke
An oil-drilling rig is visible from Jacki Schilke's ranch in North Dakota.
Veterinarians don’t know how long chemicals may remain in animals, farmers aren’t required to prove their livestock are free of contamination before middlemen purchase them and the Food Safety Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture isn’t looking for these compounds in carcasses at slaughterhouses.
Documenting the scope of the problem is difficult: Scientists lack funding to study the matter, and rural vets remain silent for fear of retaliation. Farmers who receive royalty checks from energy companies are reluctant to complain, and those who have settled with gas companies following a spill or other accident are forbidden to disclose information to investigators. Some food producers would rather not know what’s going on, say ranchers and veterinarians.
“It takes a long time to build up a herd’s reputation,” said rancher Dennis Bauste of Trenton Lake, N.D. “I’m gonna sell my calves and I don’t want them to be labeled as tainted. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to test for. Until there’s a big wipeout, a major problem, we’re not gonna hear much about this.”
Fracking proponents criticize Bamberger and Oswald’s paper as a political, not a scientific, document. “They used anonymous sources, so no one can verify what they said,” said Steve Everley, of the industry lobby group Energy In Depth. The authors didn’t provide a scientific assessment of impacts -- testing what specific chemicals might do to cows that ingest them, for example -- so treating their findings as scientific, he continues, “is laughable at best, and dangerous for public debate at worst.” Bamberger and Oswald acknowledge this lack of scientific assessment and blame it on the dearth of funding for fracking research and on the industry’s use of nondisclosure agreements.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the main lobbying group for ranchers, takes no position on fracking, but some ranchers are beginning to speak out. “These are industry-supporting conservatives, not radicals,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the environmental group, Natural Resources Defense Council. “They are the experts in their animals’ health, and they are very concerned.”
Last March, Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for studies of oil and gas production’s impact on food plants and animals. None is currently planned by the federal government.
As local food booms, consumers wary
But consumers intensely interested in where and how their food is grown aren’t waiting for hard data to tell them their meat or milk is safe. For them, the perception of pollution is just as bad as the real thing.
“My beef sells itself. My farm is pristine. But a restaurant doesn’t want to visit and see a drill pad on the horizon,” said Ken Jaffe, who raises grass-fed cattle in upstate New York.
Only recently has the local foods movement, in regions across the country, reached a critical mass. But the movement’s lofty ideals could turn out to be, in shale gas areas, a double-edged sword.
Should the moratorium on hydrofracking in New York State be lifted, the 16,200-member Park Slope Food Co-op, in Brooklyn, will no longer buy food from farms anywhere near drilling operations -- a $4 million loss for upstate producers. The livelihood of organic goat farmer Steven Cleghorn, who’s surrounded by active wells in Pennsylvania, is already in jeopardy.
“People at the farmers market are starting to ask exactly where this food comes from,” he said.
This report was produced by the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent investigative journalism non-profit focusing on food, agriculture, and environmental health. A longer version of this story appears on TheNation.com.
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The saps in this country are becoming legendary. If you think the FDA or the USDA or the EPA have any interest in doing what their charters say they are supposed to do I have a bridge I would like to sell you. This is collusion of the highest order by the US government and big oil and gas that could give a good damn about your health or that of the animals we consume. There are actually people out there and I mean thousands that believe what the government is shoveling. Amazing really amazing!
You nailed it - America is business and business is America - that is large business or those who provide large donations to both parties.
It wasn't bad enough that people's tap water was lighting on fire when someone held a flame to it, now we have to worry about our food supply (not to mention the suffering of exposed animals).
Have we had enough clues yet that fracking is just a really bad idea?
Geez.
Hogwash, it's all lies! ( sarc)
Can they prove it? Would it hold in a court of Law?
if you sue them, they just declare bankruptcy, pay themselves huge dividends and go frack somewhere else
only poor people are held responsible for their actions
Water? Cows? Chemicals? People? Soil? The only thing that matters is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
...are poisoning animals through the air, water
orand soil. Fixed the sentence for you Elizabeth Royte.This is Love Canal multiplied by a billion.
Fracking will not only ruin the quality of our water supply, and the air we breathe, it will destroy the Teutonic plates at the level they need to drill. We will end up looking like Haiti, from the repeated Earthquakes this will cause.
What are people in this Country thinking of, besides Sunday and Monday night Football? Is it that difficult to write your Senators, and protest all of this, before it causes millions of deaths?
Ours is not a proactive mentality....the only time we are moved to do anything is when our loved ones are killed for no reason, or we contract a life-threatening illness. Do we really have to wait THAT long, before we become proactive, instead of "reactive"?
We are not ignorant. We read, we see what is happening, right now....and how long do we wait, before we protest all this greedy insanity?
Did I miss where they had tested the cattle for chemical poisoning in relation to any of the chemicals used for fracking? Erin Brockovich is now working on this issue of fracking.
This chit is in our air, contaminating our food, our crops and our groundwater! I see NBC reporting this very serious story and is in their top stories today....When will our government say ENOUGH! There's PLENTY of PROOF to insist this activity ends NOW. But then again...it's just another form of 'population control.' So many people have to die off because so many others (ones earning over $250k/yr) are living longer. This could be exactly the reason the gov't is so nonchalant about all this.
the ones earning 250k a year are living longer so many people have to die off??? huh??? I think you've been ingesting something in those pork chops.
President Obama, is keeping the EPA in force. Mr.Romney wanted to abolish the EPA, and FEMA, had he
been elected. President Obama will not renew leases on Federal land, for drilling, and he is doing his
best, to ensure that the economy improves in a SANE manner, so there is nothing "nonchalant" about all this,
unless it is the apathy, most voters have, about contacting their Representatives and Senators and
demanding that they prohibit all this FRACKING, when we could be getting all the natural gas we need,
from the Bahamas, and Oil, from Tortola in the Caribbean, but none of the Media tell us that there are all
these natural resources in our neighboring Countries! Good grief....look at who prevented the Bahamian
pipeline from being brought to Florida, and then check out the natural resources of Tortola!!! What you
find, may shock you.
Ranching lobby vs. oil lobby.
Interesting fight.
During the presidential primary how many Republicans demonized the EPA?? Answer: All of them
Anyone who has watched Gasland should not be shocked at this article. As for the EPA, Congress has actually forbid the EPA from investigating fracking. I guess political donations trump the people's rights. Poetic justice would be to make the congress men and women who support this and the executives of the oil companies have to drink the contaminated water and eat the contaminated beef for six months. Maybe then they would change their tune. Fracking destroys the earth and everyone knows you should not mess with Mother nature. Let's not even talk about the polar ice cap or glaciers.
Why can't they identify the sources of the accusations? Why can't they reveal their data? Research and testing methods? The farmers are worried about their cows because they depend on them for their living, but they are keeping quiet because of money they get from the oil companies? So, they must be getting more money from the oil companies than they do from the cows that they care about and depend on to make a living... oops. All this anti fracking money all over and no one can commission an independent study to throw some water and air through an analyzer? I am really worried about why only the tails fell off, and how does a tail fall off. Not a horn, foot, ear, or some internal disease... but the dang tail, the best eatin' part.
If you remember, this is what Romney wanted to do basically anywhere there is oil in this country. Drill, Drill, Drill, baby and then die, die, die........
I know most of you are going to deny the following, but I give it to you anyway.
Years ago, ALL the same was being said about cattle that walked under power lines.
The cattle are causing all the droughts and earthquakes?!?!?!
Damed Bovines!!! The Common Denominators of DOOM!!!!!
Still tumblin', eh? I wonder whether you'd volunteer to be our guinea pig or canary, dining for a few months on meat tainted with fracking chemicals.
Not a taker? Better tumble on, then.
The tails were falling off of the cattle under power lines?!
Nope, that was NEVER the power line issue. There was a fear of cancer not actual sick cattle.
I read a while back the government contracted a multi million dollar study that found global warming may very well be caused by cow farts.
Are the PETA/PITA people happy that now we wont want cows, or mad because we are making the cows tails fall off? confusing.
I bet there are a lot of cow people asking a lot of oil people for a lot more lease money behind closed doors... just saying, no proof, but public misinformation usually leads to a little greed on the part of the victim.
Let me guess: Big Oil's "scientists" have performed a "careful study" of fracking chemicals, concluding that they are as safe as air and water. I shudder to imagine what could have happened if Mutt and the Repugnicans had taken the White House.
Why is it? People that THINK they are smart need to resort to childish name calling?
Taking the high road, eh? If only Repugnicans in Congress would choose to do the same, as opposed to continuing with their spiteful, childish antics as the fiscal cliff approaches.
here we go again now the big oil companys are like the tobacco companys pulling in experts to say for the next 20 years there fracturing dose not hurt you or ground water it is safe.....with there power and money they will get away with it... greed rules all
Where is just one real study? We have this EPA with unlimited funding and authority, and the ability to even put out false information to get rid of it, and nothing but two people and a bunch of false information. Yep, no names, places, dates, proof... means it is not real.
They gave you a link in the story. Did you look at it?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22446060
Yes I did. Did you? Try reading the abstract. You are too funny.
You mean where it says this?
Send that beef to market in red states
The beef in question is being grown in red states and for the most part being consumed all over the world. How about looking for a solution that will resolve this issue. We need oil and we need food
We won't put any money into alternative energy sources or conservation but we will spend billions to poison the ground, water, air, plants, animals, and us just for a few precious barrels of oil. What's next? Start a war to take over some oil rich country to claim their crude? Oh, right, we're already working on that.
If people were not so wasteful, we wouldn't even be talking about fracking--that's the problem.
Fracking is bad. However, more and more cities that are cash strapped are allowing this in their communities for royalties and no money up front for exploration. So, you are sold down the river....and so is your health.
Make Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, their families and every stinking politician and big oil exec who is for fracking live on these lands. When their tails start falling off, oh excuse me, they already have; when they're sick enough you'll see this stop.
Come on now. They keep telling us how safe this is. They shouldn't have a problem putting their health where their money is!!
A petition for the White House to investigate fracking sign if you feel inclined.
""
...
Fracking is capitalism at it's worst.
Fortunately, the President is committed to substituting the government for capitalism and keeping all Americans safe.
.
Joe Biden in 2016.
...
This fossil fuel problem has a real solution.....www.biorootenergy.com/about-envirolene/
a petition about fracking is on whitehouse . gov please sign and share it.
FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Blueprint to Make The Most of America’s Energy Resources
Seems to be much contradiction in the President's Actions Versus Talk.
We need to pound this information at him until he has to respond with responsible and definitive limits and disclosure of such. There are so many petitions being sent the White House that it is becoming a joke behind closed doors there.
Facilitating Safe and Responsible Expansion of Natural Gas Production
They are Moving Forward in the same fashion as 50's and 60's Oil Barons.
Mr President, it is past time for fancy rhetoric. GET ON IT!
This is absolutely crazy. Who lets their animals graze this close to an active well pad? We've been fracking for 70 years and now all of a sudden we have "problems". We haven't had a single problem in Ohio. We have healthy crops growing right up to the pump jack. No kidding animals could get sick from drinking the fluid. It's nearly impossible for it to get in your ground water. Look at the poisons used in batteries. NaF is used in the production of solar panels and is 17,000 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Wind turbines catch fire due to inadequate transmission fluid and release unknown pollutants in the air and yet everyone's willing to take those chances.
Fear is driven by a lack of knowledge. If you actually research fracking and question those who question its safety you'll get comfortable with it. If we stop fracking, you need to understand you will completely stop all domestic oil and gas drilling. We will be completely reliant and foreign oil and with the war on coal we will be completely reliant on unreliable solar and wind power.
As for the person from Ithaca, we too grow a lot of produce, particularly in the Amish communities where fracking has gone on for decades and not one single problem ever. Again, doing your own unbiased research is the only antidote for fear. Don't trust the unqualified faculty at Cornell to educate you about fracking. Cornell has a great Ag school but, as with most Ivy League schools, is extremely weak in geology.
And btw, it is not uncommon for cattle to lose their tails in areas that have no exposure to oil and gas drilling. And I would allow fracking on my farm because I know too much.
Randy;
I have been involved in fracking. Like you I understand what it really is. Those that know nothing about it are afraid. It the same as being afraid of the dark.
[PDF]
Reducing the risk of fire damage in wind turbines
wind myths Cymru - Friends of the Earth
No, we are afraid of you that continually deny the dangers you insist are safe despite much higher ingredients for and potential of and actual components that ARE dangerous to the environment, and US, in their very nature of composition, Arizona T.
I know you had to chuckle over my Bovine Derivitave Conclusion, though! I am not looking to be an enemy for you, but a friend to guide you!
Not hard to see you are correct that little evidence of widespread contamination appears in OH yet, Randy. I couldn't find many links pointing directly to OH, in particular. Not even much at all documented. There is no base comparison testing due to Frackers not disclosing the 'Secret Ingredients' in the mix, in addition to the destruction/loss/contamination of billions/trillions of gallons of never drinkable or potable water at a time where fresh, natural clean drinking water has become a luxury. Sure, everybody's tap water isn't going to catch fire, but it is ususally what we can't see that kills us. Disclosure of these ingredients would assauge the Public's fears, and since it is declared safe by so many representing the Industry, what could be an argument against doing so.
Answer us that, and the discussion here can end.
I only offer this piece as a quite fair harbinger for change and an increased level of monitering and restricting the "Free Ride" being enjoyed by the Frackers.
Peace