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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?
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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!
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.
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.
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
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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