IP: UK: Microchips & Animal Passports for Pets

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: UK: Microchips & Animal Passports for Pets
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 06:40:49 -0500
To: believer@telepath.com

Source:  London Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000150689433551&rtmo=gYkgwZZu&atmo=99999
999&P4_FOLLOW_ON=/98/9/19/npets19.html&pg=/et/98/9/19/npets19.html

UK News 
Electronic Telegraph 
Saturday 19 September 1998
Issue 1212

Passports for pets in new rabies law
By David Brown, Agriculture Editor 

BRITAIN'S stringent anti-rabies quarantine laws are to be swept aside in
favour of electronic scanners and animal passports under plans to be
published by the Government next week.

A scheme relying on microchip implants that can be electronically
monitored, together with documentary proof that animals have been immunised
against rabies and other diseases, are among a raft of proposals that could
mean the demise of mandatory six-months quarantine for all imported animals.

Under the proposals, animals travelling between designated "low disease
risk" countries in Europe and elsewhere would be allowed entry on condition
that they were carefully screened on arrival and possibly subjected to
blood tests. The Government is likely to back the proposals for a radical
overhaul of the increasingly controversial quarantine system, which has
been Britain's main front-line defence against rabies for nearly a century. 

Currently, imported pets must be held in nominated kennels for six months
until vets decide they pose no health risk to people or animals in this
country. Diplomats and members of the Armed Forces will be among those who
should find life easier - if their overseas posts meet new criteria for
assessing potential risks and
their animals are properly vaccinated and provided with proposed new
movement documents.

But quarantine will not disappear completely under the plans drawn up over
the past 10 months by a team of independent government advisers headed by
Prof Ian Kennedy of University College, London. It will remain as a safety
net to screen animals imported from countries that still have a problem
with rabies - including many
in Eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa and the Far East. "It
will not be the free-for-all that some people might expect," Whitehall
sources said last night.

Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, is expected to call a press
conference next Wednesday to publish the report. But before the Government
acts, the plans will be circulated for consultation among vets, animal
welfare organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, dog and cat breed societies,
farmers and other groups with an interest in animal health.

Britain's last major rabies scare was in 1969. In 1983, an Irish Wolfhound
imported from the United States was caught with rabies in a quarantine
kennel and in June 1996, at the height of the BSE crisis, a rabid bat that
is believed to have crossed the Channel, bit a pregnant woman in Newhaven,
Sussex. 

The Government decided in October last year to review the current
quarantine arrangements after coming under mounting pressure from animal
welfare groups and pet owners, including Chris Patten, Britain's last
Governor of Hong Kong, who complained about difficulties in returning his
family's pet dogs to Britain.

Those complaints, coupled with the decline of rabies in EU countries, have
given added impetus for the reform of the system over the past two years.
But many vets remain to be convinced that easing quarantine is a good idea,
arguing that veterinary certificates issued abroad may not be valid.

The British Veterinary Association said last night: "We have not seen a
copy of this report but our position is clear. We will not agree to any
changes which do not, in our view, provide the United Kingdom with at least
the level of safeguards against disease that the present quarantine system
provides."

� Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998.
-----------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
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interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only. For more information go to:
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-----------------------




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