Are Microchips Safe?

I saw a news segment this morning, which said that there may be a link between microchips and cancer. Obviously this worries me since our dog and 2 cats are all chipped. I thought I was doing something beneficial for them in case they were ever lost or stolen, but now I'm starting to worry...Does anyone else have any information on the safety of these microchips? Here's an article: http://www.centredaily.com/news/nation/story/201964.html

Interesting article; thanks for posting.

I'd want a lot more information on what happens to dogs and cats before I'd decide not to chip -- especially from the experience of seeing so many unchipped dogs go to their deaths in pounds even though clearly well cared for and loved. Surely in this case far more dogs have died due to NOT being chipped than would ever have suffered from a tumour. Tags and collars can very easily be lost or be removed and a lot of dogs tend to escape the house when not wearing collars/tags or never had tags in the first place. The report also notes that it is far easier to induce tumours in rats and mice in labs.

Given the long period in which chips have now been used in cats and dogs, one would expect to have seen a clear incidence in tumours in the exact area of the chip, but this report only mentions one such known case. If vets were seeing lots of tumours, even in 1% of their clients, you'd expect this to have been raised.

On the other hand, it is odd that these studies would not have been considered during the regulatory process. I'd hope they'd now undertake some long term studies in dogs and cats so that they understand better wheher there is any appreciable risk associated with chips.

Well I certainly am not rushing off to have them removed from my dogs. So often we get to hear that some product was thought to cause xyz in rats, only to learn on closer investigaton that the rats were fed something like 1,000 times the recommended dose of the product every day for a period of 3 months or whatever. I am not saying this is the case in this article, but I do find that some types of journalism to be irresponsible because it is posted half cocked & it freaks everyone out and people stop using it, only to suffer far greater repercussions in the absence of it.

That's my rant of the day anyway