Tony O'Sullivan/Toram Oslo quoted me and then asked:
 
>>not all of the fitch (ferret fur) farmers were also not careful about
>>providing cooked diet
>
>Since when have the fitch farmers feed their ferrets on a cooked diet,
>here in the UK all the fur farms used to feed a raw diet, before the
>animale lib people drove them out of the country
 
When there is Bovine TB around then such a place has to be careful to
provide that food cooked which kills the bacterium.  bTB passes to
ferrets through raw meat or raw milk from infected ungulates to the
ferrets.  bTB is a bad enough zoonotic that the typical health response
across nations to its presence is the destruction of all of the animals
at the location.
 
Avian TB (aTB) is also among the mycobacteria ferrets can get but it is
widely present in wild birds and usually does not pose a zoonotic threat
except to immune suppressed humans.  This is most common mycobacterium
for ferrets to get, and typically those ferrets are already immune
suppressed by something.  That said, intestinal TB (usually aTB) is
listed now as an emerging disease on multiple states' veterinary sites;
the route to this disease is raw feeding of infected poultry.
 
There is a lot about these in the FML and FHL Archives.
 
-- Sukie (not a vet)
Ferret Health List co-moderator
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
FHL Archives fan
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
replacing
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org
International Ferret Congress advisor
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5144]