What form the new database?

DECIDING on the nature of the future dog control database and what elements are to be included will be no small task for government in the near future. The person, group or company finally contracted to handle the job of setting up and maintaining the database to the requirements of the recent dog law changes in New Zealand will certainly be kept busy.

Many people have taken the small amount of information available so far on the matter to mean that by July 1, 2006, all dogs in New Zealand must be microchipped. But this is far from the situation. What it means is that all dogs registered for the first time from July 1, 2006 onwards must be microchipped. There is no legislation planned to force the microchipping of dogs already registered at that date.

This could be a timely warning to those with unregistered dogs - if your dog is not registered before the deadline it will cost you microchipping and database registration fees as well as council registration.

The Department of Internal Affairs, when asked for a breakdown of the way it envisages the new microchipping laws and database to function, had this to say through its senior analyst Anthony Richards:

"As part of its decisions to improve the Dog Control Act 1996, the Government has asked officials to look at the feasibility and cost of, and legal impediments to, establishing a national dog control database.

"The principal use of such a database would be to assist councils in the administration of their responsibilities under the Dog Control Act. It is envisaged that the database could facilitate the provision of services that would include: Allowing for the better tracking of dogs between councils; recording dog control infringement offences; allowing for the efficient sharing of information about infringement offences between territorial authorities; and in conjunction with microchipping, allowing the better tracing of wandering dogs and their return to their owners.

"With the exception of the last point, these features are not available through any of the currently provided databases, and privacy protection reasons would generally prevent such services being provided through existing commercial microchip databases.

"It is too early to say who will manage the database, but any such database will be governed by strict privacy protection requirements and any other obligations set out in legislation.

"The work to develop a national dog control database is still in its early stages and there are a number of issues that need to be worked through. One of these is how to incorporate dogs into the database that have already been microchipped. I would note, however, that the proposal currently before Parliament's Local Government and Environment Committee requires only dogs first registered after 1 July 2006 to be inserted with a microchip. The Government itself will also not be receiving any revenue, fees, etc associated with the insertion of microchips."

From this information we can see that the government wants much more than a microchip registration database ... it wants a total dog control database! I think we can safely say then that the Australian database used now by a few of the vets could not even be a consideration.

However, as only dogs first registered in 2006 will come under the new laws it will not be necessary to have any registrations before that date put on to the newer database.