Shame On You – People Putting Your Pet at Risk
May 7, 2004 9:05pm US/Central
As reported by CBS 11's Bennett Cunningham
http://www.cbs11.com...

Magic is getting a chip that could save his life. If Magic gets lost, a scanner like this one should be able to find out where his home is. But if Magic had a different called the ISO chip, this scanner couldn't read it. Kent Robertson is manager of Dallas Animal Control.

Kent Robertson, Dallas Animal Control
“It angers me that there is another microchip out there that we didn't even know about and we got animals coming in. How many animals are gonna die?”

The ISO chip is used in 140 countries worldwide. It's on a different radio frequency than the common us chips. According to the manufacturer of the most popular id chip for pets, the ISO chip is unreadable by the nearly 70,000 scanners in virtually every humane and animal shelter in the country.

“Obviously puts pets’ lives in jeopardy. No doubt about that.”

Who's using the ISO chip?
Banfield Pet Hospital is the nation’s largest privately owned pet hospital and located in most Petsmart's. In February of this year, it began implanting pets with the ISO chip. It decided not to wait until the market was saturated with scanners before chipping pets. According to the chip manufacturer, there are only 30 scanners in all of Texas. And how many in Dallas or Fort Worth? Zero.

Banfield and the chip manufacturer, Crystal Tag, tell us they're saturating the marketplace with scanners.

Dr. Karen Johnson, Banfield Pet Hospital
“One of the things we are doing is getting the scanners out to local shelters.”

But that comes a little late for people who have already lost their pets. Lisa Massey went to Banfield in Virginia. Her dog Hayden was implanted with an ISO chip. When he ran away, the shelter found him, but the scanner it used couldn't read Hayden's locator chip.

Lisa Massey, Pet Owner
“They stated that the chip didn't register and they put the dog to sleep 30 minutes prior to me calling that day. Unfortunately the shelter was using the scanner that they had so we stepped up... Education in the future.”

The shelter in Virginia called the entire incident, "sickening" and "preventable."

To see what Banfield tells its customers, we took my two dogs to a Banfield Pet Hospital.

This is Oz and this is Tucker. Banfield told us there are only about 1,000 ISO chip scanners out there. But at this Banfield location they told us “We have donated 150,000 microchip scanners throughout the country.” And when asked about scanners in Dallas…

CBS 11
“How about in Dallas? Do they have scanners?”

Banfield Pet Hospital
“Yes.”

The Dallas SPCA, Operation Kindness and the City of Dallas and Fort Worth do not have those scanners. But later they did admit it will be a few months before Dallas will get them. Lisa Massey wishes every shelter in the country had an ISO scanner and knew how to use it.

“Something that I depended on that was gonna save my dogs life failed.”

The Humane Society of America issued a warning to pet owners about implanting their pets with ISO chips. Petsmart, which owns 30 percent of Banfield, has asked Banfield to reconsider its program and do right by pet owners.

Banfield, we got the shame warning flags up. If you don't keep your promises, we have a kennel reserved for you in the hall of shame.