Marie Schatz commented about getting the runaround from the USDA in enforcing Michigan's animal care laws. I've experienced this when I worked in Washington D.C. with NIH and had contact with a lot of Public Health Service (NIH, CDC and FDA) researchers and administrators. There isn't a huge amount of respect for USDA among PHS folks. Whereas the PHS agencies are chartered with protecting the public health, USDA's main mission is to support the agriculture industry in the U.S. They're also supposed to protect the health and well-being of humans and animals, but some people feel the USDA gives that a definite lower priority. USDA has been caught in the dilemma in the past of promoting farming and ranching practices but not following up with regulations or enforcement of humane care standards once farms and ranches are running...well, at least until something ugly hits the headlines or Congress makes USDA amend the regulatory end of things. I hasten to add that there are definitely USDA officials and researchers who are very concerned with the humane treatment of all animals and work toward that goal, but the agency has not embraced that as its main goal. If Michigan has any US House or Senate representatives who sit on any of the Agriculture committees or subcommittees in Washington, you might get a better response from USDA by going through them. Sometimes it's quite effective and surprisingly speedy. I misquoted Carla Smith about using masks to prevent transmission of disease between ferrets and humans. (Sorry, Carla...that's what I get for relying on scribbled Post-It notes rather than a printout.) She made a good point about masks keeping you from rubbing your nose without thinking. I do that all the time. I find that wearing disposable latex gloves reminds me not to do that, too. The masks available from the pharmacist will be much better than hardware store-type masks, but still won't fully inhibit 100% of virus transmission. And, actually, you don't need to in most cases since every disease has a minimum infective dose. Usually, if you're infected with ten virus particles, for example, it won't be able to cause infection, whereas 100 viruses will. The minimum infective dose varies with each microbe and each individual, but a mask should help to cut down the number of airborne or aerosolized viruses transmitted. Of course, I'm only talking about respiratory viruses. The viruses that cause GI tract infections are passed on surfaces or in contaminated food and water. For those infections, a mask won't have any protective effect. --Jeff ([log in to unmask]) [Posted in FML issue 1701]