A pet owner says the EU's GDPR rules protected someone who wanted to keep her beloved pet - forcing her to call in the police. Two-year-old Fred vanished from his owner’s home on August 9 last year.
His distraught owner Beryl Edwards, 65, searched the neighbourhood for her pet but there was no sign of the ginger-and-white Tom cat. The retired administrator had almost given up hope of seeing Fred again until she received an email from pet microchip company Identibase last Thursday.
They said Fred was now living with someone who wanted to keep him as their pet so she needed to consent to a change of ownership on the microchip. Stunned Beryl refused and said she wanted Fred home but the company declined to tell her who had him now because of GDPR data laws.
The General Data Protection Regulation is a Regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy. Increasingly frustrated, Beryl was forced to call police and report Fred as ‘stolen’.
Finally, on Monday evening, officers turned up at Beryl’s home with Fred after forcing Identibase to reveal who found him. Beryl said: “All this could have been avoided if someone had bothered to scan Fred’s microchip when he was found.
“Apparently he was found several weeks after he’d gone missing and was in a pretty bad state, the vet needed to remove 18 of his teeth. Why on earth the vet didn’t scan him there and then I don’t know. Instead he was dismissed as a stray and ended up living with someone else.
“It only came about who he actually was when the person who found him wanted to keep him as a pet. He was finally scanned which revealed he was mine. I was a bit stunned, after all he was missing all this time and now there's a request for a transfer of ownership to someone else.
"I responded told Identibase I would not be transferring ownership and I wanted my cat back. When they said they wouldn’t tell me who had him I was completely stuck. I was forced to go to the police and report him as stolen.
“I’m just so relieved to have him home at last where he belongs but it should never have gone this far.”
Beryl is now using her own experience to warn pet owners about the difficulties of negotiating GDPR. She added: “Microchipping is not as straightforward as you think.
"It's been frustrating, I was told out of the blue that the cat that has been missing, has now been found. I went from absolute ecstasy to being told he’s alive and well to thinking ‘I can’t get him.’ It's been days of hell and stress.
“It was only the fact that the police got involved that I got Fred back. I totally understand data protection but there's got to be a way to minimise the time that’s lost when getting that information."
A spokesperson for West Mercia Police said: “This week we received a report from a member of the public concerned their cat may have been stolen.”
Mike Jamieson, from Identibase, said: "As the UK’s largest pet protection service, we are an animal welfare company first and foremost.
"We cover an enormous number of UK pets – over four million currently – and our primary interest is in the wellbeing of them and their keepers.”
