Dietary choices all come down to personally weighing the good and the
bad, taking the right precautions about the bad, keeping one's vet
fully informed on what choices are used, and accepting that it is just
fine for others to reach different conclusions, just not alright to
misrepresent any as being perfect or to try to bully or induce guilt.
The types and levels of risks differ with food choices and some are
well documented (like increased infection risk with raw food, and
increased struvite urolith risk with kibbles that have too much
vegetable protein) while some are hypothetical (like possible
increase in insulinoma risk with some kibbles)

Anyway, here is the article at VIN:

http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=23673

I recently brought in some links with concerns about a few kibbles that
were too high in D3 (this time mostly ones that might be fed to animals
like mice which could later be fed to ferrets, so see past posts for
those), so I guess this new link balances things some, though it also
tries for balance in the article itself while addressing the main topic
fully enough.

Basically, whatever is fed, the users need to at least try to
reasonably understand the risks and the postulated risks (hypotheses
sometimes pan out but sometimes do not when studied well enough) and
to follow recalls at USDA and FDA sites.

Personally, I am not interested in the politics involved (and that
stuff can't be on the FHL, anyway) but am interested in people not
pretending that perfection exists where it is not possible because that
sort of self-delusion has led to some ferrets not getting proper and
prompt veterinary care in the past. I've seen that happen once with
hypercalcemia from too much D3, repeatedly with ferrets with struvite
uroliths from low quality kibbles, and repeatedly with infections from
raw food.

Sukie (not a vet) Ferrets make the world a game.

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
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)

[Posted in FML 7508]