Newsdate: Mon 25 April 2016 – 9:15 am
Location: ITHACA, New York

Global Research is reporting that fracking fluids may have caused a number of foals to be born without the ability to swallow and reports that local newspapers in New York's Southern Tier are investigating the connection between a local racetrack owner's sick foals and the fracking fluids present on his farmland.

An epidemic of birth defects in foals

Although foals with the inability to swallow, a condition called 'dysphagia,' were born on other properties, all of their pregnant mothers had drunk water at Gural’s farm at some point in their pregnancies.

The Ithaca Journal featured a report by Tom Wilber in which he investigated the ongoing issue with foals being born without the ability to swallow â€” seventeen of them so far — on the breeding farm of Jeff Gural, owner of the Tioga Downs, Meadowlands Racetrack, and Vernon Downs.

The foals have survived, although all of them have had to be transported to Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine, located fifty miles north in Ithaca, New York. An earlier study by Cornell professor Robert Oswald and Cornell veterinarian Michelle Bamberger linked the presence of the byproducts of hydraulic fracturing to numerous animal deaths and stillbirths.

Their research included twenty-four case studies of multiple farm animals who had either been killed outright by the cocktail of chemicals or later proved unable to successfully reproduce after exposure.

The vets are conducting their own study of what may be causing the epidemic of horse birth defects. The veterinary team cite the presence of a gas well adjacent to Gural’s land that was drilled by Chesapeake Appalachia LLC as the “prime suspect” in the Gural farm problems. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection confirmed that the farm’s water is contaminated, although they failed to cite Chesapeake as the cause.

Scientists at Cornell are conducting a two-year study on Gural’s farm to investigate links between the plethora of deformed foals and fracking fluids. Foals with the inability to swallow, a condition called “dysphagia,” were born on other properties–but all of their pregnant mothers had drunk water at Gural’s farm at some point in their pregnancies.