A group of 123 American alligators (Alligator Mississippiensis) was transported from a Georgia holding pond to a Florida alligator farm in March, 1981.  The females were identified and removed to breeding ponds for reproductive utilization on the farm.  A portion of the males in the group were slaughtered over the course of the next year for commercial harvesting of hides and meat.  During the skinning and processing of the carcasses it was noted that virtually all of the animals contained varying degrees of what appeared to be solid yellow sterile abscesses or granulomas in the fat deposits of the head, trunk and tail. Grossly, the lesions were discrete yellow and brown "woody" masses within the fat tissue throughout the body.  They varied in size from 15 mm to 50 mm diameter.  When tissues containing the lesions were incised, the typically spherical masses tended to detach from the surrounding fat leaving a cavitation in the shape of the mass.  Involvement of the tail was particularly severe in most cases, often displacing up to 50% of the tissues surrounding the dorsal vertebral processes and in some cases causing damage to the skin surrounding the central dorsal scute at the tip of the tail.  In severe cases, the involvement of the tail caused considerable or total loss of available meat suitable for harvest due to involvement of even small fatty deposits between muscle layers. The sections contained large round areas of necrotic adipose tissue associated with hemorrhage, composed centrally of adipose cells infiltrated by lymphocytes and giant cells. Surrounding these were large areas of adipose cells staining homogeneously pink and yellow which contained saponified fat.  The periphery was surrounded by granulomatous inflammatory cells, macrophages, adipose cell nuclei and fibrous connective tissue bands. Histopathological diagnosis was acute and granulomatous steatitis with fat necrosis.  The combination of acute and chronic processes indicated progression and continuation of the process.  Circumstantial evidence points fairly convincingly to diet as the cause of steatitis and fat necrosis in this large group of adult alligators. The diet was made up almost exclusively of freshwater fish scraps from catches in the Georgia Flint River and associated waters of that region.  These scraps were fed as they become available and were probably not well preserved nor discarded when rancid. Previously reported cases of animals which died spontaneously suggest a similar etiology of dietary fish oil-related hypovitaminosis E.