People have been feeding live as long as they've been keeping reptiles - do it right, do it responsibly, and you should be fine. What's relatively new to the hobby are these big frozen rodent suppliers that ship product directly to your door. In the past, if you wanted to feed your reptiles, you basically needed someone local supplying prey items or you had to breed/collect them yourself. Feeding f/t is more convenient than it's ever been but that doesn't automatically make it the righteous choice. When mass production of a living creature is the name of the game, you're going to find your fair share of appalling animal treatment and living conditions. Another thing is the ever growing popularity of keeping reptiles as pets - which is a positive overall but there will always be that percentage of folks who just shouldn't own a pet, much less one that strikes fear and loathing in the majority. With the increase in keepers you also get an increasing number of bad eggs in the bunch who seem to do their darndest to shed a bad light on the hobby overall. Which leads me to probably the biggest, and definitely the most recent, addition of social media - everyone is an expert, everyone is right, everything is true.
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