My personal experience with special "ferret food" is that neither of mine will eat the stuff. In fact when I tried mixing it with Iams they picked out the Iams and left a bowl of ferret food behind. My other observation is that the only people who've ever tried to push "ferret food" on me were those who had a commercial interest in my buying it. I suspect there is a lot higher profit margin on the special stuff since it's a lot more expensive. As for taurine, I've heard that ferrets that DON'T get it can end up with health problemss and that this is one primary reason you shouldn't feed ferrets dog food since it lacks this nutrient. While your vet may truly feel he's right and I certainly haven't tried every brand of ferret food on the market, I know a lot of ferret owners and most of them use Iams (a few use Science Diet) and all of our animals seem to thrive on it. [Posted in FML issue 0717]