On Aug 13, 2006, at 7:58 AM, Linda Iroff wrote:
>PLEASE, if you have not yet sent an email to Dr. Gipson, do so NOW!
>It will only take a couple of minutes, it will cost you nothing. Do
>not expect someone else to do it for you.
Some points which might be made:
1. Grouping ferrets with a diverse set of mammals for having an 8 week
minimum sales and transportation age might gain so much opposition for
so many diverse reasons and from such a widely splayed industry grouping
that it might be impossible to get passed for any of those mammals.
2. The original recommendations for ferrets predated ferret vet texts.
3. Ferret ages need to be proven by eruption of the conical adult canine
teeth replacing the needlelike baby canines. There have been a great
number of instances in the past when paperwork did not mesh with dental
aging, although dental aging is highly accurate in ferret kits.
4. More is needed for ferrets than simply an 8 week minimum shipping
and sales age. It is time that USDA regulations better reflected the
knowledge gained, especially that of the last two decades. That is not
limited to age of kit sale and transport. It involves care regulations,
transport regulations, temperature regulations, and so on.
5. Ferrets are a very popular pet species. Several years ago Ken Wells
of the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an NPR radio interview on
the Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC) that ferrets comprised even then at least
2 billion (yes, billion with a "B") dollars annually or the yearly 32
billion that U.S. residents put into the pet industry.
6. Ferret people are a determined lot. It took about ten years to do
from start to finish, but we managed to get first an effective rabies
vaccine for ferrets (approved for use in 1990 if memory serves), then
helped the CDC gain the knowledge it needed to know that ferrets do not
pose any unusual rabies hazard (funded partly by the CDC wanting to see
how much rabies variants differed within one species, and partly by the
ferret community through the Morris Animal Foundation (which funds
veterinary advances) and ferret organizations like the AFA, and then
when enough knowledge was known the National Association of State Public
Health Veterinarians changed the "Compendium for Animal Rabies Control
and Prevention" in ferrets' favor for 1998 and ever since, and after
that change ferret people had to make sure that their states observed
the Compendium and knew of the change. Obviously, it takes people who
are dedicated to their animals to undertake such long term tasks. This
means that if there is a derailing or the work to get ferret specific
APHIS regulations that the ferret community will be back at the task
again, and in that case both APHIS and ferret community would have to
waste time repeating work that had already been done previously.
Remember that APHIS has no control over anyone who sells directly to
the customer unless the place is huge, so APHIS regulations do not
affect private breeders or pet stores. They affect farms, distributors,
their transporters (and we have all heard of kits dying in transport),
traveling shows like mini-circuses, etc.
Please, be polite.
Getting improvements to APHIS regulations is the way to simultaneously
force improvements, getting rid of many of the frustrated and accurate
common causes of complaints we all hear over and over again on ferret
lists. Getting this work done would be a great opportunity for ferrets
and all of us who so dearly love them, but it can't get done if people
in the lists do not speak up.
-- Sukie (not a vet, and not speaking for any of the below in my
private posts)
Recommended health resources to help ferrets and the people who love
them:
Ferret Health List
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
FHL Archives
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
AFIP Ferret Pathology
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
Miamiferrets
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
International Ferret Congress Critical References
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5334]
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