Portuguese Government Taps RFID Microchips for Mandatory Pet Identification Project

July 28, 2004 By News Report

Digital Angel Corporation, an advanced technology company in the field of rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets, announced today that it has won a contract from the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture to launch the first phase of a national mandatory dog identification project using the Company's proprietary implantable RFID (radio frequency identification) microchip. This contract is valued at approximately $600,000 and shipments have begun and are expected to be completed in the third quarter.

The Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture's RFID chip implants for dogs is one of many in the planning stages throughout Europe. The Portuguese dog identification program is being conducted in conjunction with the country's annual rabies vaccination drive. The Portuguese ministry was prompted to undertake the project because other countries in Europe had experienced excellent results with their pet identification campaigns and the injectable electronic identification of pets is rapidly growing in popularity throughout the world.

The deadline for all of Portugal's approximately 2 million dogs to be identified and registered in a national database is 2007.

The issue of pet identification is prominent throughout Europe thanks also to the recently enacted European Union's Pet Passport Initiative. This requires all pets being transported between, and into, member countries to have an electronic ID system or tattoo number as well as a record of vaccinations and other clinical data by October 1.

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