>[Moderator's note: Which archives? The online FML ones go back almost
>19 years (I'll add the others eventually). I don't think Dr. Williams
>was posting that far back. If you know otherwise I'll be glad to
>search the other years that aren't yet online. BIG]

Okay, then I am just failing to find it because I think that you are
right and he joined something like 16 or 17 years ago since we quickly
became fast friends. I think that the one (?) preservative which he
mentioned actually decreasing rates of a malignancy/some malignancies
to which ferrets are more prone was in relation to either BHA or BHT,
but again with the caveats that he suggested a grain of salt with some
rate mentions depending on the study design. It was actually a very
neat post. He went through types of malignancies that were looked at,
showed how high the amounts used in the studies were, showed how far
from ferrets the test animals used were taxonomically, which
malignancies do not apply for ferrets, and even which ones can and how
their rates changed including at least one in which the animals who
got the preservatives having lower rates of disease than the control
animals. He did emphasize that there are real problems generalizing
from rodent studies to ferret suggestions with many things.

These days, of course, Vitamin E is usually used a preservative in
food.

Preservatives prevent a huge amount of disease. Some food borne
diseases can set the stage for later malignancies or other ills, some
do permanent damage to organs like kidneys or tissues like nerves,
some kill, some cause insanity either permanent or temporary from
neurological damage (ex. ergot). The trick is to have the preservative
type be as safe as possible, but at the same time to not assume that
results which held in rodent studies are going to apply to ferrets, and
to remember that there is a wide range of malignancy types and that not
all species are prone to all types of malignancies plus the chances of
them differ among species of animals, and that the malignancies
themselves do not behave the same as each other when there is that
preservative exposure (some malignancy rates increase, some malignancy
rates decrease, and some stay steady).

What happens with preservatives is that the preservatives are oxidized
first but when enough of the preservative has been oxidized the food
starts to oxidize so then it rots.

Hopefully, that post was not on a different list. That is a
possibility, though, because I used to be on more lists than I am now.
I'd love to find it again since it was a very, very neat post but I've
never managed to find it in the recent searches I have made for it.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
On change for its own sake:  "You can go really fast if you just jump
off the cliff." (2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 6843]