The American Microchip Advisory Council for Animals (AMACA) announced recently that it plans to build a national "umbrella" database of all the pet microchips in the country.

The database will consolidate all the existing databases out there so that any microchipped pet can be identified in any situation.

AMACA got its start when a group of microchip manufacturers in the USA decided it needed to address a forseeable problem that's currently plaguing Europe, having over 50 microchip databases, and a hit-or-miss approach to recovery.

Actually, the history with AMACA began when Banfield Pet Hospital and a Swiss microchip company, Datamars, hired a lobbying firm to force the USDA to adopt the ISO standard chip protocol. The USDA held hearings around the country to fetch input from both sides of the issue. It was through these hearings that many segments of the industry decided to join together to do some forward-thinking and planning for everyone involved.

Present at these hearings were representatives from animals shelters and animal rescues who expressed a problem that with so many different kinds of microchips currently in use, opening up the market to the ISO standard chip would usher in several more databases to comb through, making it impractical to identify lost pets.

Hence, the creation of a national microchip database.

With AMACA's planned national database, anyone who finds a lost pet, and knows it has a microchip, can report it to AMACA through their call center. AMACA will identify the manufacturer of the chip, and provide that information along with the toll-free number for that manufacturer. Thus even with 50 databases out there, shelters and rescues can identify any microchip.

AMACA's website has a membership feature, that's open even to pet owners, providing members with news at it happens.

Visit AMACA at: http://www.amacausa.org/