Staci,

Pasteurella is a bacteria, but that is a minor point =). Secondly, I
would guess that these statements are being made because there are
several of us who bought ferrets supplied from RWE over the past year
who have gotten sick animals. The pet store I bought my two from
reported that they were sick on arrival from RWE, and they had
documents on hand that supported these claims.

It is not just the animals from this rescue that have respiratory
problems, it has been an issue with their stock for a long time. One
of my sick RWE kids died in January, presumably from ADV (we are still
waiting on the UoG to run his samples, but his clinical symptoms were
very ADV-like), and at least one of my other kids is a suspected
carrier or in the early stages of the disease. My other sick RWE kid
still has a respiratory infection after almost a year of doing cultures
of his throat/nose and trying different antibiotics. He did have a
confirmed infection with Pasteurella at one point. Not even sure what's
up there now, but we can't seem to get rid of it.

As far as I understand, the fact that they were selling sick animals
consistently throughout the US may be part of what prompted the
investigation into their breeding stock in the first place which led to
their ultimately going out of business. I was not involved, so I can't
say for sure, but this is my conjecture. Someone correct me if I am
wrong, please.

-- 
Rachael Harrison
Doctoral Candidate
Physiology and Functional Genomics
College of Medicine
University of Florida
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[Posted in FML 5922]