301 redirects for affiliate links

The affiliate application that I am using for my ecommerce site offers the following option:

Use 301 Redirect -- When redirecting all links, this option will use a 301 redirect. The code "301" is interpreted by a search engine as the page has "moved permanently". This can help with page rank but there are also some risks in using this method.

Is this advisable for SEO? What are the risks?

301 redirects are implemented by vBSEO to help turn contextually irrelevant dynamic URLs into search engine friendly static pages. The main benefits are that you have more control over the appearance of your URLs as apposed to an out-of-the-box solution. But of the course the risks are that it will take search engines time to completely reindex your new content, and remove the old url content which was present before the 301 redirect implementation.

Hmm... if its for incoming links, my guess is that the affiliate program is trying to pass weight to your site pages (by using the 301).

If it's for outgoint links, then it's probably so that the product/services associated with the affiliate program benefit from your link to their pages.

It shouldn't have adverse effects in either case. Well, none that I'm aware currently.