This has probably been touched on before, but why is it that rats can be sold for live food in the USA? In the UK it is illegal. (Not to say that it never happens of course- laws will always be broken by some people.) I was thinking about this today. It might take a snake 3 days to decide to eat a rat that is put in with it. During those days, of course the rat will not be fed, & will probably be too terrified to sleep. On those grounds alone, it should be banned.
Incidentally, are there any States where it IS illegal? I'm sure there must be some.
People here keep snakes but they feed frozen rats/mice to them.

That is disgusting  

I have nothing against snakes, in fact, I find them to be very magnificent creatures. But I am definitely against feeding live rats and mice to them. Not only is it a terrifying, painful experience for the rat, but some rats have been known to actually attack and even kill the snakes they are meant to be fed to. I can't see why anyone would even bother to take that risk if they loved their snake, or to watch a live animal unable to escape be slowly devoured if they had any compassion.

The thing is, any responsible herper will NOT feed live. They certainly don't leave live prey unsupervised.  On the herp groups I am in, it is continously advised to feed pre-killed food to snakes.  Sites are even posted showing the damage that thr rodent can inflict.  Yes, our babies do fight back and sometimess it costs someone a beloved snake.  
When I run into people who breed their own food, it is done because only then can they ensure that the food will be healthy. Why feed unhealthy sickly rodents when you can give the best?  Unless you have multiple reptiles, it becomes expensive to raise your own food and then sometimes, they fall in love and can't feed their herp.  
I do have a ball python that stays with a friend.  It gets frozen thawed prekilled mice from a store in the area.  My friend went to the store and made sure to ask about how the mice were kept and how they were euthanized.  
However, in somecases, like a national petstore chain that I won't mention, some snakes (mainly ball pythons) are wild caught and it is EXTREMELY hard to get them to go to prekilled. Ball pythons are notorious for going on long fasts (the longest, I think was 22 months). You can get them switched but along the way, live have to be given.  It stinks even more the ball python's natural diet includes Gambian pouched rats and small birds, not rats and mice.  We have a couple snakes where I work that must get live because they have refused prekilled on many occasions but they are supervised and not left alone over 15 minutes (but they strike as soon as the mouse is put in).  
I wish it would be made more public how dangerous and inhumane it is to feed live prey. But I am not sure how they would go about the process without petstores lobbying to keep things the way they are.  I do wish the petstores would pass out info on why you should NOT be feeding live and I really wish more stocked prekilled frozen.  Until we can get more publicity, we just have to educate live feeders.

Back when I was in junior high school (long, long LONG ago).  I was forced to watch a snake kill and eat a mouse in my science class.

I was the only one in my class that couldn't bare to see it and ran to the back of the class refusing to watch.  My teacher yelled at me (in front of everyone) "you get back here and watch or I will give you and F".    It was the most horrible experience for me and I've never forgotten it.

That was a little off the subject.  But the memory came back when this topic came up and I thought to mention it.

When I was about 8, I was in a nature science class where we watched a large rat get fed to a very big soon-to-be-deported-and-released python.  

I don't think it would have been so bad, except that the carpet got caught up in the snake's coils, and it couldn't properly suffocate the rodent.

After quite a bit of protesting from myself and my little brother, the wildlife person finally reached a gloved hand into the cage and worked the carpet out of the snake's coils.  After that, the rodent died fairly quickly, but I felt that the first 40 minutes must have been horrible!  

Not all places in the US do allow it, although there is no federal (or state) law that I'm aware of. The Petco nearby is in a town (either Harper Woods or Roseville, not sure which one) here in Michigan which not only doesn't allow snakes to be sold as pets, but also does not allow the sell of any live animal for the purpose of feeding.

While I'm sure it does go on still, I've seen more than one irate snake owner completely turn around when hearing about what can happen to their pets if they fed it a live rat or mouse. Surprisingly enough, I don't think some of these people had enough brain cells to comprehend what could happen. Or had been living their lives inside a little box.

I'm sure those that don't listen to the knowledgeable Petco staff (a rarity, I know) explain why they should not give their snakes live rats or mice just go to the nasty Petsmart I'm boycotting a few miles away, or some other place that sells rats/mice for a more "feeder" price (the good pet shop here charges $13 each for them, to help further ensure they will be pets only) but hopefully more than the three people I've seen resolve not to put their snakes in danger have been affected by one town's ban on animal cruelty.

I think that there are vast cultural differences between Americans and UKers.  Not the least of which is how we treat animals.  A discussion came up awhile back about cats - here in the US, it is stressed that cats be kept as indoor pets, while in the UK it is stressed that cats be kept outdoors.  As for live food - I think Alicia struck it on the head with her quote.  We may think it is cruel, but it is absolutely necessary in some cases.  And the American mind-set is one of "Don't tell me what I can and cannot do."  Which is why gun laws are such a touchy issue, as well as taxes.  

Do I think children should be forced to watch a snake kill a live animal in a classroom?  NO!  But I'm not sure how often that happens, actually.  The only animals we ever had in a classroom were gerbils and lizards in our high school biology room.      

I truly hope that I don't offend anyone, but I have to be honest. I could not ever bring myself to actually offer a rat, live or pre-killed, to a snake as food. However, being a vegan for various ethical and health reasons, I cannot understand how anyone can be sickened at the sight of a snake eating live prey, which is the natural order of things, and yet continue to eat animal meat in any form when those animals are "contained" and "maintained" in absolutely horrific ways on an industrial scale. I would far rather watch a snake, wild or captive, respond to its naturally innate urges and instincts than watch a human being eat a hamburger because I know exactly where that hamburger came from. I know that the animal which produced that hamburger suffered an existence, and an end to its life, far worse than the live rat going down that snake's throat.

As far as forcing kids to watch snakes eat live, I have had this experience too.   I was in a nature camp over the summer,  I was between 7-10 yrs old.   They had a HUGE boa constrictor there, and they had discovered a wounded rabbit on the grounds that they decided to feed the snake.  All of us campers were forced to sit and watch this poor animal die in one of the most horrible manners I have ever seen.   It was awful.  I will never ever forget it.

Touche'!

I will fully admit that I am a hypocrite there.  I can't bring myself to watch ANY animal suffer for any reason.  I will not eat rabbit, duck, veal because they are sweet little cute animals.  Yet, I'll sit right down and eat a chicken breast or a nice juicy steak.    I hate myself for it too.  I honestly cannot think about where the meat came from or it will make me sad and sick.  But I do eat meat.  I've always said if ever came a time when we had to kill our own meat, I would become a vegan immediately.  I wish I liked vegatables more, I would actually become a vegan.  Perhaps someday I can.
I get closer to it each year that passes.

I just had to respond to your post, because I agree with you.  I love animals and hate to see them die, but still eat them after they get to a point where you cannot see fur or their sad eyes.....

Thank you for that reality check.  

Interesting -- our Petco stores sell their rats as feeders (when they sell them as "small, medium and large" and the large rats are more expensive, that's a pretty good indication), while PetsMart sells as pets only.

It's definitely not a federal law or a law in any state, but individual merchants seem to decide whether or not they will sell live feeders.

And now, to touch on the rest of the topic in general...

I first want to applaud everyone for talking about this subject so calmy, intelligently and civilly. This is a VERY loaded topic, and has led to some pretty nasty threads in the past. Every time I see the subject heading, I cringe, but you've all handled it well. Thank you.

When I was in first grade, we went to a local zoo as a field trip. One feature of the zoo (which, incidentally, made a list of the 10 worst zoos in the USA about fifteen years ago...) was the snake pit. As my class watched, the zookeeper dumped in about ten mice, and we were forced to watch them get devoured, one by one. This was over 20 years ago.

About fifteen years ago, my 7th grade science class had a boa, and there would be days every once in a while were there would be a mouse roaming around the tank.

In my sophomore year of high school, in biology, I had to dissect a rat. We named him Bart. This was the first time I really started to notice the beauty of the rat as a creature. Even though he was dead and soaked in formaldehyde, I couldn't get over how beautiful he was.

I agree with kmw that live feeding is not unlike the gun lobby in its controversial nature. Americans do have a mind set that makes us think that any change in our lifestyle is taking away our freedom. Not letting snake owners feed their pets the way they want to is not far from taking a gun away from someone in the NRA. It's kind of sad, really.

Absolutely.  However, the frogs now come pre-dead, which I think helps.  

I really do think that in some cases it is important to actually see the "real thing", so I am not completely against dissection.  However, I think having every kid in America do it is a little much.  At the very least, I think that someone who doesn't want to participate should be given a "no-kill" option which will not effect their grade.  We are so interested in freedom of religion here, but if someone's religious beliefs disagree with dissecting a frog/fish/worm/etc in school, that's suddenly grounds to give them an F.  Doesn't make any sense to me.  

I have religious beliefs which prevent me from injuring the eyes in any way.  I know I got two assignment Fs in Biology (2 different animals/years) because I would not dissect the eyes.  Complaints that this was against my religious beliefs were scorned, essentially because I am not part of a major/powerful (Christian, Jewish, etc) religion.  So, of course, my religious beliefs don't count.  And this is the same school that banned the singing of Christmas carols that mention anything specifically Christian because it offends the Jews.  And forced kids to get parental consent forms to participate in halloween crafts (like making spiders).  Bah.

One of my friends got an F in Biology just this past year because she refused to kill the bugs they caught.  They were supposed to go out into the field, observe bugs, and then kill them.  I don't know about you, but I don't regard killing critters needlessly as "observation".  She refused to do it.  And I would have, too.  She offered to "catch & release", but the teacher just gave her an F instead ("they're just bugs" - my reaction to that is "you're just a primate, does that mean I should 'observe' you?").  I mean, I am all for killing animals when it seems necessary, but just casual slaughter of any living thing bothers me a great deal (even moths & ants - although I don't consider killing an animal to protect your food source 'casual').  

Snake-eat deaths actually don't seem that bad to me.  I know that most people are against it, but it is at least natural.  The thing that disgusted me about the experience was that the rat suffered a long time because the snake was not in its natural habitat.  I'm sorry, but there are not fake grass carpets in the wild.  And to have the wildlife person just ignore it, although you could tell that the rat was suffering (the snake didn't seem too pleased about the event, either)...  grrr

I do not think that seeing things in nature is a bad thing.  I watched a wild cat kill a wild mouse once.  It was brutal, but the mouse didn't suffer very long because the cat was actually hungry.  I didn't think that this was unnatural or bad.  But when a friend of mine bought a white "pet" mouse and gave it to her cat for a play-toy...  The cat played with it for almost 2 hours before finally killing it and leaving it on the floor (then going to eat its cat food).  That bothered me.  

JFTR, I have killed animals for my food, and I have no problem with that (I don't touch the eyes, of course).  However, I am offended by people who kill animals for their horns/hooves/capes/etc and leave the bodies to rot.

Similarly, I enjoy watching nature shows where animals in their wild habitats do the things that animals do (including eating each other).  However, I don't want to watch captive-bred snakes eat live rats, because there is no reason for it.  I don't want to see a law banning the live feeding of snakes, because sometimes it is neccessary.  However, I do want to see snake-owners educated.  Frozen feed is safer, typically cheaper (you can get 6 frozen mice for $3 at one of the local pet stores - 6 live mice cost closer to $12), and gives the snake the same nutrients.