Eleanor wrote:
>I have a question about feeding mice/rats or whatever, live or dead.
>Can feeding them to ferrets cause cancer or problems?  Aren't mice,
>etc. bred for lab use and seem to have the cancer gene?"
 
In specialist labs, rodents are bred for many different traits including
different types of cancers, hairlessness, high metabolism, eating
disorders etc.  These are not the rodents that are available to the
general public but are bred for research purposes.  Even if a carnivore
ate these mice, it would not be affected by their genetic makeup.
 
Mice from a reputable breeder will be raised to be as healthy as
possible, in very clean surroundings.  Doing so is in the breeder's
best interest because his/her entire stock could be wiped out by a
contageous disease, or if a valuable snake ate an infected mouse and
died, so would the business.
 
Shirley
[Posted in FML issue 5200]