I am certainly leaning towards agreeing with you both. I don't think I'll be acquiring my feeders from him in the future. However for personal reasons, I'd still like to know if my snakes can get sick from eating a mouse or a rat that had previously died from an unknown cause.

Example scenario: Say I buy 5 mice from the pet store and feed them to my snake one at a time, once a week. This way I have food on hand, don't have to travel to the pet store weekly and I can keep the rest in a cage, bin or aquarium and I feed/water them daily. However when checking on the mice, I find one has died overnight. Is it UNSAFE to feed it to the snake? Should I just write it off as a loss and discard it or can it be fed to the snake in the same manner as a F/T mouse?

I personally don't know anything about cross-species illness transmission and would like to hear something other than opinion or moral/ethical standings. Not that opinions don't count, I appreciate all feedback. Thanks again.