I can't help but put in my $.02 in about whether it is OK to make a carnivorous animal a vegetarian. First of all, I am NOT a vegetarian therefore I do not pretend to understand completely a person's decision to become one. Humans are "omnivores" which means that their diet consists of meat and vegetables. In the wild, omnivorous animals can survive on either meat, or vegetables, or both, and this provides quite a selection. Herbivores eat vegetables only, and carnivores eat meat only. In the case of carnivores, these animals do not have the ability to properly digest vegetable foods. This really means that they shouldn't live on a diet of vegetable products only (or much of them at all). The great "food debate" has raised many, many interesting issues, such as the fact that even the kibbled "ferret food" isn't really the ideal diet for an animal who, if wild (not domestic), would be hunting and eating actual animals. Vegetarians choose this way of life for many personal reasons. Even human vegetarians have to be careful not to miss out on important nutrients. I imagine that vegetarians who just don't "like" the taste of meat and choose not to eat it for that reason, would not insist that all animals in their household be vegetarians too. However, those people who are vegetarians because they don't like the way livestock are treated (bred and killed), or whatever, might be boycotting this process by not eating or buying the product. I don't object *completely* to this reasoning, HOWEVER: 1. Old fashioned hunting for food is less common these days and has been replaced by animal farms etc. which may not be ideal, but it happens. 2. The ferrets ought to be able to eat what is best for them since they don't get to participate in any debates or have a say in the matter or even have a CLUE where their food comes from! 3. The kibble food made for ferrets is made with the "leftovers" from animals which would be killed for food anyway. Yes, this is a justification, however everyone draws the line somewhere and I don't think this is an unreasonable place to draw it. An aside: I don't like the idea of using animals for research. I'm not against it entirely because I can be convinced it is necessary for some things, however I will not do it myself. I used to work in a research lab, where the lab down the hall used rats to study lung cancer. They were only interested in the lungs of these rats. Our lab used to "steal" the brains to use for our research. We never had to buy our own rats to obtain the brains. We felt that our colleague's rats would die anyway whether or not someone used their brains so we didn't feel "as bad" about it. Again, it's an arbitrary place to draw the line. I just wanted to say that I think it's unfair to draw the line "FOR THE FERRETS (or cats, or dogs). If you don't want to eat meat, then don't. I understand that those of you who want to make your carnivorous animals into vegetarians actually want to do it right, but I still think you are taking a big risk in doing it. It's the "thrive vs. survive" thing again. Someone else mentioned they almost got a lizard instead of a cute carnivore (but didn't, and just dealt with feeding the animal a meat-based diet), but maybe that's what some people ought to do rather than compromise the health of your pet. I'm interested in hearing responses if people disagree. Obviously, this is MHO. - Adrienne [Posted in FML issue 1739]