>> 2) Has anyone checked with any of the major rodent suppliers to see
>>    if they might be using contaminated grains to feed their stock?
>
>I think that is actually a very logical question set. There were a
>number of chickens and about 50 pigs that got into the food stream
>before food animals were looked at, and only recently have there been
>the right tests to check farm fish which got the melamine. I know that
>one of the fish farms had only given it to fry so those never got out,
>but they are looking at additional farms.

I have snakes, and I feed them rodents (duh!)...

Most rodent suppliers are fairly small operations--family run, unless
you have connections to access the companies that labs use.

You can always ask your rodent provider what they feed, but snake
owners are fairly particular about the quality of rodents they get,
since that's the ONLY item the snake gets as a meal (ie snakes eat
whole prey) so suppliers tend to use the feed as part of their
advertising/selling plan.

If you order from a website many will list what they feed their
rodents...while some rodent breeders will feed dog food, most snake
owners don't want rodents that have been raised on dog food, so most
breeders (that I know of) feed their rodents either mixed grains or
Mazuri pellets (https://www.mazuri.com/indexMazuri.asp), or another
form of pellets. Those rodent breeders that feed their own formulation
of pellets are just not large enough to be buying from China, nor is
rice gluten a usual ingredient in prepared laboratory rodent diets.

Also, with prepared laboratory pellets, since this food is going
into laboratory animals, the quality control is much higher and more
restrictive, since labs need a certain level of precision so there
are no extra variables to affect their experiments.
http://www.labdiet.com/5001.htm
http://www.teklad.com/faq.html

So basically you're more at risk feeding food purchased at the grocery
store than you are feeding mice, depending on your grocery store and
your rodent supplier, of course.

A good source for Rodent Breeders is http://kingsnake.com
 ... scroll down to the Rodents/Feeders section on the front page.

-cobalt

[Posted in FML 5615]