I am a commercial ferret breeder.  I sell many thousands of ferrets annually
into the pet trade and to animal testing labs.  I am making a fair profit.
 
But I got a big problem.  My breeder females wear out after a while, and
since they're non-productive aka non-profitable, gotta get rid of them.  We
kill them.
 
Please don't ask me how; you don't want to know, but we use the least
expensive poison available.
 
What in the world can we do with 10,000 (?) freshly killed ferrets every
year.  Oh, I know . . . we can sell them to a rendering facility and get so
many bucks per drum-full of dead ferrets.  After all, isn't this what's done
with the dogs, cats, road-kill, infected cows, horses, etc. that the animal
control agencies are overloaded with?  To the rendering factory . . . so
they're not really wasted after all. Schucks, as long as the public doesn't
really know, then the rendering plant can sell their "output."
 
And, man-o-man, our best customer of the renderer's product is . . . yes,
you are way ahead of me . . . yes the pet food industry.  Sure.  That makes
good sense, and what the hell, everybody on down the line makes a buck or
two, and nobody's the wiser.
 
Hey!  Dear reader: what do you think I'm up to . . . Huh?  Please let me
tell you if you're still with me:
 
      GO RUN LIKE HELL TO THE BOOKSTORE AND GET THE BOOK WITH THE TITLE
 
             "Food Pets Die For"  by Ann N. Martin & Dr. M. W. Fox
 
I bought it several days ago and could not put it down.  What an eye-opener!
 
And, you know, I never really thought about it before, but that commercial
ferret food that has the name, "Totally Ferret." My, God!  How utterly
bizarre that name is in its full reality.
 
Now at long last, the light begins to dawn on me, as it will on you, just
why the domesticated ferret is doomed to a death from cancers and all sorts
of un-explained and curious lethalities, and methinks possibly a
predispostion to ECE.
 
Good Lord, man . . .we're killing them with the food we lazily feed them!
We're feeding them "recycled" animals of all kinds,including the poisons,
heavy metals, bacteria, viruses, and yes, prions.  Prions, the newly
discovered protoplasmic blob that is the causitive agent of Mad Cow Disease
and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD).
 
You know, you don't have to go along with what I've ranted here.  Go, my
friend and FRIEND OF THE FERRET and get this book and read it.  It'll blow
you away, as it did me.
 
              Periculum in mora. [L] There's danger in delay.
 
     Edward Frettchenvergnuegen Lipinski, Der Frettchenlustbarkeitsfuehrer !
[Posted in FML issue 2121]