Traveling to Europe With Your Pet ? You’ll Need To Microchipped Him.

New law regarding pet traveling to Europe or within.

Are you going with your four legged friend?  European laws are about to require that all cats and dogs traveling to Europe, or within its boundaries, will be microchipped.  The law should be in affect after July 2011 , even if you have your animal tattooed and you have the papers to match. This will be Europe’s new standard for identifying all pets traveling by air.

A microchip is no bigger than a grain of rice, and the vet implant these chips to cats and dogs but also into all kinds of pets – even reptiles and birds can get microchipped.  The chip uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and uses radio waves as a medium to transmit unique information of your pet like – identifying number that is accessible from a database which shows the pets name, owners name and contact information. So if your pet got lost, he can be scanned for a microchip and be returned to you.

In Europe  about one quarter of European pets have been chipped, in comparison to the U.S. with only 5 percent, roughly 130 million dogs and cats.