Microchipping enables the reunion of lost animals with their owners, reducing the welfare costs of extended time in rescue kennels and preventing unnecessary euthanasia of owned animals.
Animals in rescue kennels experience significant welfare compromise from confinement, noise, disrupted social bonds and uncertainty. Each day in a kennel represents welfare costs that microchipping and database registration can prevent. Unidentified animals may be euthanased after legal holding periods expire. The welfare benefit of microchipping is direct, quantifiable and prevents suffering at the scale of hundreds of thousands of animals annually.