Quote Originally Posted by kc261 View Post
I assume that since it is safe for people to eat these hogs that have been fed on these high copper hog feeds, that the amount of copper that stays in the animal is not nearly as high as in the food they feed them. So the same is probably true for rodents.
See, I personally need a lot more evidence before I would risk my snakes with something like this--I want real long-term trials, not just a few months or a year on it, too. It's safe for people to eat pork raised that way, but people do not eat pork exclusively--they eat many other things as well, so that doesn't necessarily mean the levels of copper in the pork aren't excessively high for humans. If you eat a lot of pork liver, you may find copper toxicity is an actual risk. Our snakes will be eating the innards along with the rest of the animal, including the organs that concentrate copper.

While most non-ruminant animals appear to tolerate copper very well, there are some species that don't--including some breeds of dogs, and as was mentioned, some fish. Since copper toxicity harms the liver and kidneys, it's definitely something that would need to be studied for a long time, with each species individually, and very thoroughly, to be safe.