Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my! Well, it seems that every few months, with a new crop of new members, certain individuals insist upon reiterating the points against Marshall Farms. And once again, as the debate rages on, I get more and more upset by the seeming lack of sanity. And once again, I feel a need to point some things out. Point #1) Regarding PETA. Despite what certain individual members of PETA might have done to help certain members of the FML, PETA remains an extremist organization. As such, they cannot be trusted. They believe that people shouldn't have pets at all. Do you REALLY want to support them? As an extremist organization, one cannot trust ANY statistics, etc., that come from there. In fact, one shouldn't trust statistics at all. The main reason is that ANY statistics can be twisted to fit support ANY what organization using them wants them to say. Point #2) I cannot believe someone suggested none of us every buying Marshall Farms ferrets from pet stores. I believe it was said that "I realize that this may mean quite a few little fuzzies at the pet stores may not get homes as quickly and that is very unfortunate, but I believe it is necessary." What this means is this: "I realize that this may mean quite a few little fuzzies will get sold too people who know NOTHING about ferrets, and of those only a small few will have found a forever home. The rest will end up either dead or in the shelters, and THEN you can adopt them. Sad, but true." Point #3) While perhaps the idea of farm breeding, and the problems inherint in that are not ideal, I have never been shown proof that Marshall Farms is really all that bad a place. YES, I have heard the stories of babies being shipped too young. YES, I have heard the possible medical issues of early spays and what have you. YES, I know that MF sells to labs. YES, I understand that people assume MF ferrets have higher disease rates. What all this translates too is this: Of the many many ferrets they breed, occasionally a very small number of them are shipped too early. This is an infrequent mistake. There have been suggestions that medical issues arise from early operations, especially spays. This has never been proven, even if it DOES make sense. Selling too labs is arguably as responsible a thing to do as it is irresponsible. Without ferrets on which to perform medical experiements, we would not have HALF the medical knowledge of ferrets that we have. Each life sacrificed to this research save hundreds or more of our OWN ferrets' lives. Not to mention the benifits to human medicine that have come from ferret research. (Intubation of infants is just one example. Ask a mother who's child's life was saved by such a procedure if she wouldn't rather those ferrets lives had been spared.) Marshall Farms ferrets are by far the most prevalent ferrets out there. I would guess that most people on this list own mostly Marshall Farms ferrets, whether they purchased them from the pet store or rescued/adopted them. Does this mean that most of the ferrets we hear about getting sick are Marshall Farms ferrets? YES, and that makes complete sense, without reading into it that MF ferrets are more prone to disease. I have never been shown any proof, (even considering that both of my boys who died from ferrety diseases were Marshall Farms,) that Marshall Farms ferrets are more likely to get these diseases. Danielle says she was told you have to go by percentages, and that is 100% true. And those percentages must be based on a LARGE test group, following strict scientific method, and doing the study without bias towards a certain outcome. Only until such a study is conducted, and it shows conclusively, upon my OWN observation of the research data, unfiltered into "layman's terms", that Marshall Farms ferrets are more likely to get sick, only then will I believe it. Until then, it is propoganda and statistics being misused. Melissa Barnes Mira, Tasha, Robin, Samuri, O'Dell, and Nietzsche, all Marshall Farms, four from the pet store, and NONE of whom are currently ill from ANYTHING, even considering they range in age from 4 years to 7 months. Missing Cael and Booboo, both of whom were Marshall Farms, one from the pet store, one from a shelter, and both of whom died from ferrety illnesses. [Posted in FML issue 3624]