NYT article: controversy over pet tags/chips

[DeepModem Mom]

Is There Anyone Out There Who Can Read My Tag?
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Published: July 23, 2005

Over the last 20 years, tens of millions of dogs, cats and other pets have been implanted with tiny radio identification tags that are used to reunite tens of thousands of strays annually with their owners.

But the industry that has grown up to market the tags in the United States has been locked in a bitter battle recently over which radio frequency to use. The wrangling has led to confusion and anger among veterinarians, animal shelters and pet owners, and in one case, a runaway dog being accidentally put to death.

The main dispute pits supporters of an international standard, which is also used in the United States in tracking livestock, against companies that have built the domestic pet tracking business based on tags and scanners that operate at a lower frequency.

A second conflict is over the insistence of American Veterinary Identification Devices, one of the first companies to make tags, that its tags be encrypted. The company says it does so to fight fraud. As competitors and many tag users see it, encryption serves mainly to tie customers to its database and drive up costs....

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The first signs of a compromise emerged recently with a proposal July 12 by American Veterinary, known in the industry as AVID, and Banfield, a pet hospital chain that has been one of its leading opponents, to finance an independent study of the available technology and steps needed to create a universal tag- reading standard. The chief executives of the two companies wrote a letter asking the Coalition for Reuniting Pets and Families, a consortium of veterinary and animal welfare groups recently organized by the Humane Society of the United States, to oversee the study....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/business/23pets.html?8hpib