Eric--
       The Assembly Bill to legalize ferrets failed to pass the vote.
>From the way the votes fell, it appeared that the assemblypeople
didn't really take the issue seriously and just voted along political
lines.  The only hope the "ferret lobby" in CA have for this year now
is probably going to be to tack the ferret legislation onto the end
of another, more popular bill.  I suppose they could write an
entirely different bill to introduce, but that's not likely to get
much attention either, I would think.  Very disappointing, especially
considering how hard many ferret lovers worked to gather support for
this bill... it was lost by 3 votes the first time the Assembly voted
on it.  The only good thing about it is that the Dept. of Fish & Game
may finally have gone way too far in their misinformation campaign.
Just before the second vote they were distributing flyers stating
that ferrets were a rabies risk and that the Imrab vaccine is
ineffective at preventing rabies in ferrets.  Needless to say, this
info was passed along to the manufacturer and distributor of the
vaccine, and their lawyers have become involved.  A settlement that
would force F&G into a public retraction, hopefully a printed one
that was distributed nationwide, since some of those flyers were
reported to have made it to other states is hoped for, but I haven't
heard anything further about this in a couple of weeks... I will have
to ask of those who were closer to this....
     At any rate, sorry to say, but ferrets are still illegal in CA.
 
          Debra in Ft. Worth, TX
 
[Posted in FML issue 0816]