I work at Oberlin College.  There is a poster in my office, produced by
the College Admissions Office several years ago.  It shows one of those
lovely pictures of the full earth from space, with the words:
 
Think one person can change the world?
So do we.
Oberlin.
 
The College President said later that she didn't really like the poster,
that it takes a community to effect change.  She's right of course, but
it is also undeniable that often it is the action of one individual that
serves as the catalyst for change.
 
About 1400 members of the ferret community have been involved in helping
to change the ferret world.  They wrote to the USDA, produced and passed
out flyers at meetings and shows, posted on their mailing lists,
distributed information through their shelters, and asked their vets to
write.  My thanks to all those who helped with this endeavor.
 
Special thanks go to the leadership of the AFA, who produced a letter
that people could just sign and send in, and distributed it at shows and
to their membership.  Over 900 copies of that letter were sent to the
USDA, that's pretty impressive!  The number may be even higher--it was
last updated on Nov 14, several days before the deadline.
 
Special thanks also go to Dr. Freddie Ann Hoffman.  She put together a
group of veterinarians and others in the ferret community to produce a
detailed, well-researched submission on the special needs of ferrets,
why the current USDA regulations were not sufficient, and what needed to
be done to correct this.  The resulting document is 30 pages long, plus
120 references and 9 appendices!
 
Finally and most importantly, I want to acknowledge and thank our
catalyst, Sandra Kudrak, DVM.  Sandra has been working on this for about
4 years!  For a long time she worked just with veterinarians and others
at the USDA to learn how to negotiate through the complex process of
"rulemaking".  You can read about this process in the transcript from
her presentation at the 2005 International Ferret Symposium in St. Louis
last spring:
http://www.ferretcongress.org/USDA/Kudrak2005transcript.pdf
 
Sandra would be the first to acknowledge the work that everyone else
has done, from those who helped her with the Petition that was sent to
the USDA in March 2004, to the 1400 people who let the USDA know it was
time to protect our ferrets.  She knows it takes the whole community to
effect change.
 
The change has not happened yet, but I am confident that our efforts
will bear fruit.  My deepest thanks go to Sandra.  And so should yours.
 
Linda Iroff
International Ferret Congress
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5068]