Jim Choate says:
I question the validity of the chips use, seems to me that tatooing the ear of the pet and placing this in a database would be much more efficient and a LOT less expensive.
I suspect the chip insertion uses vastly less expensive labor, and probably less expensive gadgetry, as well. There might also be a memory-size problem; I have a cat with an ID number tatooed in one ear -- about the only place where it is reasonably visible on casual inspection. The number is about nine years old, and has four digits. One or two more and there would be trouble reading it. (The cat is a survivor of feline leukemia research at U. C. Davis; the ID dates from that program. There's a program whereby surviving animals from the Davis labs are placed out.) -- Jay Freeman