As has been said before, feeding is only as safe as the person doing the feeding. A good friend of mine has well over 500 snakes and I am there every Thursday when he feeds his collection and I have never seen anything negative happen to the snakes due to the live rats. He has even forgotten a few in there for a day and still nothing. I think that in most cases, if a rat attacks a snake in just a few hours, something is wrong with the rat. For example, it is either severely starved and/or dehydrated.

I do not feel it is ok to leave live feeders with the snakes for more than maybe a couple of hours, but things happens. In most cases where a feeder was left for a long period of time, the snake was unharmed. And this is coming from the guy who's snake was chewed up by a rat. I honestly feel that snake must have been dehydrated to the point where it had to chew through my snake for water.

Also, feeding F/T has it's negatives too. There are just as many risks involved.