That's about standard nationwide. Cat licensing is also being enacted in many jurisdictions, with poor public acceptance. Visual tags often become lost, misplaced or obsolete even for those who obey the law. The best strategy is to use a microchip as the primary, permanent identification and to use a collar-tag as a visual, secondary back up. This will make it possible for anyone to identify a lost pet at a glance yet protect the pet when its tag has been lost.
More pets die each year as a result of being lost than from all diseases combined.
Thanks to medical advances, we can protect pets from contagious disease, but we haven't had a truly safe and permanent means of protecting pets in the event they are separated from their owners, until now. While organizations strongly endorse the use of external identification, the sad truth is that 90 per cent of lost pets are never identified and recovered. A microchip is with your pet for life and can greatly increase the chance of recovery if a pet becomes lost. Furthermore, the current sheltering system relies on license revenues and impoundment fees to support animal programs. Secondly, shelters receive no compensation for their services.