The Guardian has a nice write-up of the issues surrounding pet RFID tags. They point out the compatibility issues with varying standards and readers, and claim that a bigger market wouldn’t have the same interoperability challenges:
Finbar Heslin, a vet in the Irish Republic who has worked to try to streamline Irish microchipping standards, says part of the problem is that RFID chips have been developed for a different market. “The idea behind microchipping is excellent. The downside is that you’re taking the technologies from the logistics industry and trying to apply them to animals.”
Logistics is a huge market for RFID and so there is a greater incentive to adhere to standards. “But with animals, the RFID market is small, and there are no standards, even across Europe,” says Heslin.
In both Britain and Ireland, the situation has been what he calls “a free for all”, because distributors weren’t licensed and cheap, non-ISO chips were sometimes brought in from abroad.
I’m not so sure about that. Even huge lucrative markets see the same interoperability hurdles and a lack of consistency across vendors. I brought up something similar back in early October 2005 on Schneier’s blog, specifically with regard to the debate in Congress about how and when to upgrade America’s animals.