“In Pennsylvania, the oil and gas industry is already on a tear—drilling thousands of feet into ancient seabeds, then repeatedly fracturing (or ‘fracking’) these wells with millions of gallons of highly pressurized, chemically laced water, which shatters the surrounding shale and releases fossil fuels,” Royte writes. “New York, meanwhile, is on its own natural-resource tear, with hundreds of newly opened breweries, wineries, organic dairies and pastured livestock operations—all of them capitalizing on the metropolitan area’s hunger to localize its diet. But there’s growing evidence that these two impulses, toward energy and food independence, may be at odds with each other.”

The story, the first in-depth look at the potential impact of fracking on food, cites the first and only peer-reviewed report, published earlier this year, suggesting a possible link between fracking and illness in food animals. It includes 24 case studies of farmers in shale-gas states whose livestock have experienced neurological, reproductive, and acute gastrointestinal problems after being exposed—either accidentally or incidentally—to fracking chemicals in the water or air.

Farmers are not required to prove that livestock are free of contamination before selling them to middlemen, and federal authorities are not testing for these compounds at slaughterhouses. “[Exposed livestock] are making their way into the food system, and it’s very worrisome to us,” says one of the authors of the report, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, New York, veterinarian. “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.”

Royte also follows rancher Jacki Schilke, who raises cattle in the northwestern corner of North Dakota, and whose cows quit producing milk for their calves, lost from 60 to 80 pounds in a week, and had their tails mysteriously drop off after fracking began near her land. Schilke herself is in poor health, and though she has since moved her cattle upwind and to cleaner sources of water, she is wary. “I won’t sell them because I don’t know if they’re okay,” she says. Royte notes, “Nor does anyone else.”