I think there may be some truth to this. I recall reading an article a few weeks ago in the paper that was talking about research being done in Canada on a bird flu vaccine. It did state that there was a shortage of ferrets available to use for testing. I'm not a big fan of animal research and at the time I recall thinking to myself that they'd better not come knocking on our shelter door as we sure wouldn't be volunteering any of our shelter ferrets for that! I do believe though that the article did mention something about looking overseas for research ferrets. Barb Hoult Alberta Ferret Society [Posted in FML issue 5171]