Pet Scan

They flutter from telephone poles all over the city: homemade fliers with blurry photos of lost dogs or cats, posted by desperate pet lovers.

Now, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services believe they may have a technological solution to the problem of wandering pets--computer chips.

By implanting a chip the size of a grain of rice under the skin in the scruff of the pet’s neck, the department hopes to cut down on the number of animals it kills.

Dogs and cats implanted with chips can be scanned like groceries and more easily reunited with owners. “We would like to see every animal have a microchip,” said Peter Persic, spokesman for the department.

The chips are inserted with a needle and are considered safe and painless by veterinarians. “I’ve watched a dog’s face when it’s being done, and it doesn’t even flinch,” said Jack Nylund, senior systems analyst for the department.

The chips have been used in Ventura County, the city of San Diego and by several other agencies around the country. But L.A.’s interest marks a sizable step in the evolution of so-called electronic animal identification.

The city had held off in part because the fiercely competitive companies that make the chips were not manufacturing compatible technology, so a shelter with one brand of scanner might not pick up the code from an animal implanted with another brand of chip, said Nylund.

“We’ve needed someone to say, ‘This is what we are using,’ and then use it,” said Studio City pet dermatologist Alexander Werner.

Now, new compatible technologies have largely eliminated the problem, said Nylund. Accordingly, the City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted unanimously Monday to approve a contract with American Veterinary Identification Devices (AVID) of Norco, Calif., to install scanners in all six of the city’s animal shelters. The scanners will be able to read all kinds of chips.

Under the program, the city will also implant AVID chips in all dogs and cats adopted from shelters, adding $15 to the adoption fee. And--going a step beyond even San Diego’s extensive program--the city would offer implantation services to the public for a fee of $20. The service, which would come at no extra cost to the city, is subject to approval by the full council.

Eventually, said Nylund, microchips may substantially reduce the number of nearly 60,000 animals euthanized yearly by the department. That represents more than 70% of all the animals impounded.

On a broader scale, L.A.’s move means that the microchip as a standard tool for animal control is about to become commonplace.

In San Diego, where for three years animals adopted from shelters have been implanted with microchips, reunions between owners and lost pets happen much more often, said Lt. Danielle Spilker of the city’s animal control department.

Pet owners rushed to implant them in their animals, she added. “We used to get really excited when we heard those beeps from the scanner, but not anymore,” said Spilker.

By contrast, scanning now performed by shelters of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals-L.A. turn up very few animals with chips.

“This is a step in the right direction,” said Madeline Bernstein, the group’s president. “In a perfect world, every animal would have the same chip which could be read by the same scanner.”

Bernstein and animal control officials say microchips are not a replacement for pets’ collar tags or ear tags, which are still needed to show animals have received rabies shots, and to identify pets, since only shelters now have scanners.

AVID and other companies are also rushing to expand microchip implants in farm animals, a development they say will improve tracking of dangerous diseases such as Hong Kong’s “bird flu” and mad cow disease. Already, microchips have been an important development in tracking wild animals such as birds and salmon returning to their ancestral spawning pools.

Not all pet owners are expected to embrace the concept, said Nylund. Already, a few people at public hearings have recoiled at the political implications of this technology. “There is something spooky about it, and everyone realizes it,” he said.

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