Traveling to Europe or within with your four legged friend? Well, European laws are about to require that all cats and dogs traveling to Europe, or within its boundaries, will be required to be microchipped.  After July 2011, even if you have your animal tattooed and you have the papers to match, your pet will still be required to have a microchip. This will be Europe’s new standard for identifying all pets traveling by air.

A microchip is about the size of a really long grain of rice, veterinarians implant these chips into all kinds of pets – even reptiles and birds can get microchipped, as well as cats and dogs. The chip carries a unique identifying number that is accessible from a database which shows the pets name, owners name and contact information.  AVID, a company among the largest sellers of microchips in the world, claims their microchips reunite as many as 1,400 lost pets each day.

According to a 2007 USDA report on the regulations of pet microchipping, 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.

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