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Microchips to Save Peru's Alpacas
lakeesis writes "BBC News has published an article stating: 'Peru has launched a campaign to implant microchips in hundreds of pedigree alpacas to try to stop the best animals being smuggled out of the country. Officials say they know alpacas are being sneaked across Peru's borders'."
All it takes for the people smuggling the animals is to take a hand-held scanner and find out the location of the microchip and cut it out.
If it is easy to implant, it would be easy to remove.
Hmm, looks like they are just trying to throw technology at a problem hoping it would work.
Then again, ofcourse, the smugglers maybe quite unaware of this and the more gullible ones may just get caught.
And oh, first post?
Won't the smugglers just remove the chips, much in the same way that people now remove microchips from pedigree animals stolen from family homes? :)
I personally think they will have to do a bit better than this, but full marks for trying
Sheesh! The things people do for greed.
"...safeguard the gene pool of its three million-strong herd."
You mean, safeguard the genepool to stay within Peru. Heh.
Peruvian law bans the exportation of alpacas that win pedigree certificates.
Wow. Safeguard the genepool so that the best stay within my borders. Not to troll, but unless these have been specially bred (say, genetically modified), you are trying to hold onto what nature has bestowed upon you.
And prevent the best from getting out, so that if there is any disease or epidemic, the best will all die out with not too many of them outside my borders.
And that is good how?
All your Alpacas are belong to us.
Maybe Peru could start the new fad of turning 'pedigrees' into intellectual property.. It is bound to happen sooner or later with animals.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
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if I asked about getting these for the kids? Sure, there is probably some kind of law against, but *you* try keeping track of a three year old in a supermarket.
I would stop stealing them if they stopped making them so goddammed cute!
I can put a chip in my dog to ID it in case it strays or is stolen. Why is it news that someone is doing this alpaca's? It's bad enough that it's a slow day on BBC - but this stuff shouldn't raise a blip here. BTW - tagging 900 in five years? that doesn't sound very much. I mean, 3 alpaca's a week is hardly difficult. If there are 5000 alpas's in NZ (a href="http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/articles/753 _Alpaca_farming.htm">soucrce
then I expect there are a tad more in south america.
Thank god!
I've been so worried about those poor alpacas I've been having trouble sleeping. We all know the only people who can properly care for alpacas are from Peru.
If I am going to smuggle something over the border, I'm not likely to admit to the authorities that this thing exists in my possession. If it doesn't "exist" then they cannot put a microchip in it can they.
This has me worried though (from the article):
"We know that alpacas are being moved across the border with Bolivia and then on to Chile," Pilar Tuppia from Peru's National Council of South American Camelids told the Associated Press.
This included "unscrupulous individuals" buying top animals from poor people in the countryside, she said."
If these people's animals are such top-notch and pedigree, why are they so poor and living in the countryside? Isn't the Alpaca industry booming?
I'm not the only person to thing that the Alpaca business is a little fishy. See here and here (google cache of geocities page)
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
They just want a chance to earn a decent living for their families back in Peru. If Peru would improve the national economy there wouldn't be any reason for them to leave. They do the jobs no one else will take, would you eat grass in someone's lawn for $7/hour? I say, give them amnesty. And driver's licenses too! They want to buy car insurance, but can't because they are denied a driver's license.
Delicious!
afrodisiac they say!
I'm an alpaca, you insensitive clod!
Does this mean now that the Alpacas will be able to easily buy drinks in Ibiza?
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
depending on how large these microchips are, after eating one of those steaks, you may find yourself being hunted by l33t peruvian rangers, insisting you are an alpaca
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
[i]"Not to troll, but unless these have been specially bred (say, genetically modified), you are trying to hold onto what nature has bestowed upon you."[/i]
Alpacas were specially bred by native americans to create fine lineages of different quality hair. The hair was woven into prized high quality fabrics.
When the Europeans came, they saw the Alpacas as beasts of burden and used them as such. They took the high quality alpacas (extremely fine and long hair fibers) and carelessly bred them with low quality alpacas (coarse and thick hair). As a result, a pedigree created from centuries of eugenics was destroyed because the European conquistadors didn't recognize the value of Alpaca fabrics.
It's as if someone robbed a prize dog show or horsebreeding show, and used all the purebreeds to mingle with the mutts outside. Generations of selective breeding and centuries of hard work was destroyed.
It's only been in recent years that Latin American countries have tried in vain to resurrect the old lineages with limited success. By carefully rebreeding Alpacas, they're hoping to recreate the old lines. Imagine trying to recreate esoteric dogbreeds from hybrids after losing all the purebreds.
And this isn't just the destruction of a hobby, but the destruction of an entire industry. The Europeans literally destroyed the Alpaca fabric industry when they conquered Latin America.
So in answer to your question -- this is NOT what nature gave them -- this is the result of centuries of eugenics from before the arrival of the Europeans. They're just trying to salvage that industry, with little success so far. Historians are aghast when they compare the fine fabrics of the past and the coarse, useless fabrics now being produced because all the purebreeds were destroyed.
the braying noise from your very large suitcase. :)
Implants like these generally need the scanner to be within feet or inches to be detected.
There has to be a better way of doing this.
"Microchips to Save Peru's Alpacas".
That just sounds really funny.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
The title here as well as on bbc seems to be quite misleading.
;but if it's only for preventing other nations to have them then it's *bad*
They mention that the alpacas' population (in S america) is 3.5 millions and in general you'd expect the word 'save' to be used for animals that are endangered of extinction. With such a population (unlike the population of, say, the lions in africa and india) it'd take a loooong time for the alpacas to become an endangered species.
But this effort it seems is to make sure that those that win pedigree certificates do not get out of the country. If it's only for having a very good class of the animals, fine
(My knowledge about the breeding of this sort of animals is zero)Supposing someone'd have already been able to smuggle a few alpacas of the highest pedigree out of peru, isn't there a chance that some guy has already taken up this job of having only the best of the animals beating their purpose/?
This is definitely a troll and excuse me for that, but the phrase 'safeguard the gene pool' reminded me immediately only of Herr Hitler
So Peru owns the genetic code to the best alpacas, and doesn't want it to be freely available. Hmm...
So cutting out the microship turns a banned export into a legal export.
Whereas in your example cutting it out would turn a legal export into an illegal one. If you had illegal fish you would have to insert a chip. This is probably a lot more work. Also fish don't have fur with wich to cover the wound.
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Wow, is that person for real ? It's not some kind of super elaborate troll is it ?
Who are these 'liberals' she hates so much, what do they do ? It must be have been pretty awful.
i mean, a day doesn't pass where i am not reminded of the terrible capitalist peruvian greedy hegemony that hangs over the entire world
the truth is, a lot of 3rd world countries are fighting tooth and nail with large corporations which try to PATENT the genetic legacy of creatures which live within their borders
now you tell me about justice: does peru deserve the bounty of the creatures that live within its borders? or monsanto or archers daniel midland?
now in an ideal world, no one would own the genetic legacy of any creature
but i hardly think blaming peru for working within the confines of a world business climate that it did not create is the whole point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They have enough money to acquire implants for their top alpacas, but they don't seem to be able to summon up what's needed to develop a viable textile industry for the benefit of the people who raise and work with the alpacas.
It's a marvelous wool--warm, lightweight, soft, and non-allergenic. It can be spun and knitted or woven into highly coveted, very expensive textiles. I suspect that if more thought were put into this effort, the owners of the pedigreed alpacas would have more interest in keeping them at home in Peru.
Anne
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...issuing double-barrelled shotguns to kill malaria-infested mosquitos. While it might work on some level, I find it unlikely that the alpaca-smuggling industry is going to be crippled by these measures. All the smuggler has to do is get his hands on a scanner, find the implant, and remove it. Or, if he's not particularly concerned about being able to sell the Alpaca on the white market, just ignore the thing altogether. I doubt the buyers will mind.
Look, defenseless babies!
Sorta like some countries like to protect their natural resources from getting out... like oil.
That's why my car won't work. There are microchips in the oil pan, and alpacas in the gas tank!
I thought somebody should mention that a little city in Peru, called Iquitos (it's in the Amazon basin), used to be the center of the rubber industry. Then somebody smuggled the rubber tree out of the country and the industry moved somewhere cheaper.
It seems to me, Peru is just trying to prevent a similar disaster with their pricey alpaca fleece.
Your dog probably isn't worth $10,000.
I'm astonished that nobody's objected yet to the idea of implanting microchips in alpacas - without their consent, obviously, since they can't give it - and then using the chips to make sure they can't cross borders.
:) It's not Slashdot without kneejerk opposition to implanted tracking chips!
Replace "alpacas" in the above sentence with "immigrants" (or "the mentally handicapped") and there'd be a huge outcry about evil government conspiracies. As it is, the only real debate seems to be "will it work?"
"But alpacas aren't people!" C'mon, what happened to the good ole' slippery slope?
Officials say they know alpacas are being "sneaked" across Peru's borders.
Yes, let's trust these officials. They are obviously brilliant people, along the line of Dan Quayle.
Excuse me, now. My alpaca dealer is on the other line.
All this time, people thought I was paranoid. Turns out I just think I'm an alpaca!
The alpaca (Lama pacos) is featured on the front of the rather new (2003) O'Reilly book, Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules .
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Ths would have generated much more of a response if "RFID" was mentioned.
What the HELL is that? It looks like a sheep fscked a llama.
my (unpreviewed mungled) point was that this is pretty standard stuff and hardley news. Whether you use the technology on my $1k pooch or a $10k alpaca (which sounds way to high but anyway) the technology is trivial.
...Peru is real?
blaming peru for that, while ignoring the us, for example, is like going after rhino records when sony music is committing 99.999% of the crimes
in other words, you are right, but about a drop in the bucket
why don't you take all of your righteous hot air and point it at the us instead? why attack the little guy and let the big guy get off scott free? use your hot air where it counts, stop beating up on the little guy, peru
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it