My worst fear is that they will NOT point out that other pets have a worse rate for serious injury, or that parents need to watch ANY type of pet near a young child, or that ferrets have little mouths so such injuries take time and with the screaming that would have been going on response must have taken a while. Point out that it is like comparing the size of a small chihuahua mouth to that of a larger dog. <http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20091014/NEWS/910139923/1070&ParentProfile=1058> Request that if they mention the cause they point out the other pets have worse rates and tell some of those stories, too: http://www.eonline.com/on/shows/dr90210/ http://www.drrobertrey.com/dr-90210.htm BE POLITE and be grammatical. Use your spell checker. Tell good and helpful stories about ferrets. Point out that the serious injury rate by ferrets is 1/200th ***per capita pet*** (which means that it is adjusted for the comparative numbers of pets) that of dogs, and is similar to the serious injury rate by pet rabbits. They can find some of that info in a past issue of FDA Veterinarian, May/June 1991, Vol.V1, No.III, by pediatrician Dr. Freddie Ann Hoffmann, pages 1-6. There sometimes are also bite rate data available from state public health veterinarians and the websites they have which are usually connected to the state health departments. It may take a bit of searching. [Moderator's note: Sukie sent the above mentioned issue (which seems to me like a compilation of pages from multiple issues) as a scanned document, which you can read here: http://ferretmailinglist.org/special/FDA_VET93x.pdf The publication can be freely copied/distributed. BIG] Those who want to send more thorough letters may want to use portions from these and may want to share the URLs of further resources with other people here at the FML: http://health.state.ga.us/pdfs/epi/gers/Nov07GER.pdf http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/68/6/593.pdf <http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.2000.217.190?cookieSet=1&journalCode=javma> http://www.in.gov/isdh/21215.htm <http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+bite+out+of+the+budget%3F+Costs+and+characteristics+of+animal+bites...-a019404376> http://www.ferret.org/read/faq.html 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 [Posted in FML 6486]
