Present: [x] Apologies [A]; Status: Representative WG3 [R], representative TWG [T] , ISO official [I], observer [O]

Mr. Vrolijk demanded that the voting procedures in WG3 should be established on a country basis and makes a motion to that effect. Although the delegates are nominated to participate in the work of WG3 by their national standardisation authorities, every delegate contributes to the WG as an expert in specific areas. Results will be reached on consensus rather that on voting. On being asked, Mr Zens, secr. of SC19, confirms. Only if this proves to be impossible, voting might be used. He recommends that WG3 return the problem in that situation back to SC19. No ISO directives exist about voting procedures on WG level. It is up to the WG’s to organise their work and to come to results with sufficient support.

On this clear statement of Mr. Zens, Mr. Vrolijk reacts by submitting a motion to decide at this meeting upon a procedure for voting. This resulted in a lengthy discussion in which several experienced WG3 members repeated the importance of trying to reach consensus. Most of the delegates at the meeting for the first time, together with the delegates Mr. Anisimov from Russia and Mr. Burch from New Zealand adhere to the opinion of Mr Vrolijk. After the insertion of a roll call of all present, the status of certain experts present proves to be not clear. Therefore the chairman rules that conclusions should be reached on consensus only and concludes that the motion of Mr. Vrolijk is out of order.

A request of Mr. Grotewahl (Sweden), submitted as a written motion, is accepted to discuss the modification of ISO 11784/85 just after approval of the minutes. Furthermore, two additional points will be added:

* TWG demonstration of FDX-B100 and HDX-ADV Enhanced prototype transponders / readers

* Presentation by Mr Zens of the ISO SC19 Internet web page.

Under point 11 add: In Russia, the standard has not been implemented because of problems. Furthermore under this point 12.000 must be changed to 12.000.000

Referring to these minutes, point 7, Mr. Grotewahl (Sweden) adheres to the Russian request for suspension of ISO 11784/11785 according the fax of the Swedish SMS to Mr. Zens, which he submits to the secretary. This fax, archived as doc. N227, concludes: "We are against the suspension of the standards but in favor of a review of them.
Also Mr. Burch (New Zealand) submitted a fax, which Standards New Zealand on his request has sent to Mr. Zens. This fax, archived as doc. N228 concludes "We do agree that these standards need review".

Mr. Van ‘t Klooster explains the procedures for the ad-hoc committee as agreed upon at the WG3 meeting in Lugano.
Mr. Jansen as and Mr. Van ‘t Klooster presents the report the TWG and drafted by the ad-hoc committee as doc. N225: It proved that only two proposals for revision were sent to the ad-hoc committee (Russia and Italy) and one more was handed over during this meeting (Brazil). All 3 proposals were remarkably identical and contained mostly deletions of the text in the current standards.
Regarding the claim that the current standard does not ensure unique ID codes, Mr. Jansen remarked that the standard only advises how to organise the ID numbers. Being asked by him, nobody at the meeting could point out where this claim was written down in the standards. Mr. Jansen compares the transponder code with the serial number on bank notes. The Dutch national bank declares that these numbers are unique in spite of the fact that coiners may duplicate some numbers on false bank notes. The same holds for car license plates and and credit card numbers. Therefore, there is no reason why the word "unique" may be used in all those cases but not for RFID numbers.

The second claim that the current standard should not be suitable for both livestock and companion animals proved to be incorrect. Laboratory tests and practical experience proved that the combined FDX/HDX technology has more than sufficient reading speed.

Also the claim that the current standard should incorporate two mutually incompatible technologies, specifically HDX and FDX, is incorrect. There are a number of combined HDX/FDX readers in the market now.

Statement 4, "Each standard should define the preferred product embodiment to be used for individual applications (i.e. ear tags and boluses for livestock, miniature implantable transponders for companion animals)" is not correct because the ISO 11784/11785 standard does not specify the physical shape of the transponders. It just standardises the code structure (ISO 11784) and the air interface (ISO 11785).

About the last claim, that the current standard should not allow for sufficient backward compatibility, Mr. Jansen says that at the issue of these standards in 1996, the backward compatibility was being regulated in Annex A of ISO 11785.

The conclusion has been drawn in the report that "The proposals for revision of the standards ISO 11784 /11785 are based on misinformation and misinterpretation by the authors and do not contain any valuable proposals to improve the standards". The Ad-hoc committee therefore "advises WG3 to reject these proposals because they do not contribute to the improvement of ISO 11784 /11785 and will only hamper the development of the ISO 14223 standard for advanced animal transponders. Furthermore we regret any possible spread of misinformation on supposed shortcomings in ISO 11784 /11785 and the submission of proposals for unnecessary revisions that consume valuable time and energy. WG3 is advised to request that the ISO board to distribute these comments among all connected Standard Institutes".

The subsequent discussion proved to be very confusing and emotional; it became visible that only several new delegates, Mr Burch and Mr Vrolijk disagreed with the results of this report. Mr. Vrolijk, claiming to carry the position of the SCC (Canada) in the Ad-hoc committee, claims never having received the report. Mr. Van ‘t Klooster as chairman of the Ad-hoc committee reacts that he has transmitted this report by e-mail to Mr.Vrolijk and other members of the Ad-hoc committee. Mr. Ingwersen, of the Canadian delegation informs the meeting that Mr. Vrolijk had no communication about this subject within Canada. For his part, Mr. Ingwersen brings the confidence of Canada to the work of the WG3 and the TWG to the table.

The chairman concludes that this report of the Ad-hoc committee will be submitted to SC19.

6. TWG demonstration of FDX-B100 and HDX-ADV Enhanced prototype transponders / readers.

DEMO 1: Datamars demonstrates an advanced reader prototype, capable of using the FDX-B100 and HDX-ADV protocols to be standardized in the new advanced standard. The demonstration shows that off-stock actual transponders of either HDX or FDX-B type can be read with the advanced reader prototype, and also that an actual Datamars ISO reader can read the code according to ISO 11784/11785 from both FDX-B100 and HDX-ADV advandced tranponder prototypes. From an advanced transponder prototype (Philips, FDX-B100) a chip serial number can be read - information which is not accessible using the actual ISO 11784/85 protocol but using the respective advanced protocol.
Texas Instruments demonstrates the reprogramming of Page-2 of an HDX-ADV transponder using a TIRIS S2000 reader and then reading the HDX-ADV tag again using the Enhanced Datamars reader. Using the TIRIS S2000 reader, also the contents of all 16 pages in the transponder are displayed.

DEMO 2:Nedap demonstrates the FDX-B100 technology, useng the same Enhanced Datamars handheld reader as well as a stationary Enhanced FDX-B reader. The ID read from the FDX-B100 tag, along with a Serial Number, which was programmed into the tag by the chip manufacturer. Again the ID is displayed on the first line of the Enhanced Datamars reader, with the Serial Number displayed below it. The prototype tag incorporated an authentication number and password. After receiving the ID code from the tag, the reader sends an authentication command and the tag responds with the Serial number.

7. Presentation by Mr Zens of the ISO SC19 Internet web page.

Mr. Jansen presents the status of the efforts of the TWG regarding WD 14223/1 as described in doc. N221, containing version 2.7. This version only differs in details from the version that has been discussed at the last meeting

9. Discussion on this TWG proposal and making of decisions about submission to SC19.

This final version is accepted by the meeting and will be submitted to SC19 by Oct.1 as Committee Draft. Minor editorial modifications must be submitted as soon as possible to the WG3 secretary.

Mr Fred Nind presents his paper entitled "WSAVA Subcommittee Recommendations Regarding Microchip Implantation Sites", filed as doc. N226. This paper was developed in order to attempt to standardise the microchip implantation sites and thus raising the overall integrity of the RFID systems. The only concerns expressed with this document relate to the recommendation of sites for animals that are predominately destined for the food chain. In most countries, the livestock markets are giving priority to food-safety and are not recommending implants in food chain animals. This paper will be posted on the web site of WG3.

11. Proposal for a Press-release (Mr. Cooper, doc. N220)

In order to counter the mass of misinformation coming from a particular sector regarding the status of the published standards, it was previously agreed that a small sub-group generate an accurate press release stating the facts and information regarding the ISO 11784/11785 standards.

Mr Bob Cooper gave a screen presentation of the paper, being an introduction/summary of the press release.

Doc. N220 is accepted with some minor editorial changes to be placed in front of the press release according Doc. 214. It will be placed on the web site of WG3 as soon as possible.

Mr Peter Stegmaier (TWG member) presents a document titled "Test Specifications for ISO 11784/85 Extended Laboratory Test" (doc. N222) that resulted from a meeting with ICAR in Bonn 3 August 1999. It can be regarded as a starting point and a subject for further discussion. Mr Jansen explains that the goals of the ICAR procedures for readers and tags are twofold: conformity tests and performance tests. Test-readers as reference for testing the relevant performance parameters of transponders should be developed.

Mr Sains stresses that this is becoming very urgent for the approval of the market: these approval tests must be released in October 1999 by the latest. Several other delegates adhere to this opinion. It is decided to insist ICAR on doing this as soon as possible. In the event that ICAR did not receive a clear mandate to doing this task, this will be extended by ISO. Mr Ruppert suggests developing the approval test in close co-operation with the TWG.

During the meeting, the following persons submitted written motions, which are recorded in the Appendix: Mr. Cakl from Czech Republic, Mr. Frautisek Lavcak from Slovwakia, Mr Leonande Naminez from Chile, Mr. Grigory Anisimov from Russia, Mr. Gary Burch from New Zealand and Mr. Ingemar Grotewahl from Sweden. Most of these motions originated from delegates being for the first time at an WG3 meeting and are expressing disappointment with the customs and procedures of WG3.

The Swedish delegate Mr. Haave comments on the motion of Mr. Grotewahl, that this expresses his personal opinion and not of Sweden.

Mr. Sheridan, delegate from New Zealand, comments that he wishes the opinions expressed by Mr. Burch be understood to be his personal view and not necessary those of new Zealand.

Mr. Ingwersen says that the phrase "ISO Reader" proves not to be unequivocal. Other committees like ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC31 also are preparing RFID for different (non-animal) logistical applications. It is recommended that the phrase "ISO Reader" should be replaced by "ISO-11784/11785 Reader".

On request of Mr. Cooper, the secretary confirms that ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC31 and ISO/TC23/SC19/WG3 can exchange their mutually exchanged documents for internal distribution (if necessary).

After Mr. Mason states again that ISO 11784/11785 cannot guarantee uniqueness of life numbers , Mr. Hassan Zade, president of Datamars, accuses Mr. Masin (EID/Trovan) of conducting misleading demonstrations, apparently indicating that Datamars transponders could be changed even after implantation, using Philips read/write transceivers and transponders with Datamars numbers. He wants a clear written declaration from EID/TROVAN stating that such a change of numbers is impossible. Mr. Mason, president of EID agrees to provide this declaration.

Mr. Vrolijk want all discussions and TROVAN objections to the ISO 11784/11785 standards on the WG3 web site. This meeting and discussions will only be summarised in the minutes.

Mr. Ramirez claims the Chile has submitted written objections against the ISO 11784/11785 standards.

Mr. Cooper remarks that WG3 is not intended as a debating society. We are developing standardised technology for the benefits of industries and users as well.

Mr. Sains wants a clear statement from Mr. Zens as Secr. of SC19 about the mission of every delegate attending the next WG3 meeting.

Mr. Clemons and Mrs Emmenegger express their dissatisfaction with the less constructive character of this meeting, suggesting that additional ISO rules/procedures for new member in the working group should be developed: the membership should be preceded by a certain observing period. Mr. Van ‘t Klooster reacts that it might be necessary in future to use voting procedures. A certain waiting time as observer might be necessary to avoid unwanted effects due to lack of knowledge and experience.

Mr. Sains proposes not to use voting procedures at the next meeting and to invite the SC19 chairman, Mr. Alt to attend this meeting. This is accepted.

Mr Tucker wants to express his thanks to the chairman to keeping this meeting within the ISO rules and for carrying out his task in a professional way. This thank was supported by many of the other delegates.

The Conclusions/summary can be found in doc. N229.

The actions have been marked in the report as text in Italics.

The next meeting of WG3 will be on May 15+16 in Lyon (F).