OK I keep getting flack for keeping my snakes in a rack system

[Crotalids]

Well, where do you draw the line?

You seem to think that everything that you do is so perfect, so I'm assuming you'd draw the line at what you're doing. But why not make the naturalistic enclosure that much more natural and therefore better by adding a much more natural substrate?

I draw the line at doing things that are clearly impractical. For my rattlesnakes, i'm not exactly going to ship in sand from the US am i. Sand is sand at the end of the day.

I've never heard of a mite outbreak that could be directly linked to newspaper. You got mites because your friends snakes had mites. I can almost guarantee his animals did not pick up the infestation from newspaper..

Honestly I have no problem with most of the stuff you're saying and how you keep your animals is fine and dandy by me. I dig naturalistic habitats and have personally kept several in the past for select species. How you come across could use a bit of tweaking if you desire a warmer reception and a good natured debate. The main thing that rubs me the wrong way is you expecting people to accept your method as best when you can offer no different proof than the rest of us that your animals are "happy" and healthy.

I know they aren't in the news paper, but some how they've got into his collection.

If you use natural substrate its not hard to eliminate the chance of mites being present. I freeze, and then bake and micro wave all my substrate to make sure anything in there is killed.

To be honest, i couldn't care less if people accept it or not. People are set in their ways, and me coming on here without scientific backing isn't going to change that. But because there isn't evidence for it, doesn't give me reason to just provide my snakes with the basic environment does it? We shouldn't just assume because they are eating etc on paper towels they wouldn't benefit from a more interactive enclosure.