The identifiers and dates that must match across every document

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The answer

The microchip number is the thread running through every document, and it must be identical everywhere:

• the import permit application
• every laboratory report
• the veterinary health certificate
• the RNATT declaration
• the identity check, where one was performed

A government approved veterinarian must scan the chip at each visit and record the number on all documentation. For a dog with two compliant microchips, both numbers must appear on all of the above, and both must be scanned and recorded at every visit.

What cannot be fixed later

This is the part that turns a small error into a restarted process:

So a wrong microchip number on a laboratory report is not a correction. It is a new sample, a new test, and — if the original sample date was your anchor — a new 180-day wait.

Check these before each document leaves the vet’s hands

Five minutes of checking at the appointment is worth months at the other end:

1. The microchip number, digit by digit, against the scanner display — not against what is written in the file from last time.
2. The date of sample collection, and separately the date the laboratory received it. The arrival date is what starts your 180 days.
3. The submitting veterinarian’s details, which must be the government approved veterinarian who actually did the work.
4. The endorsement itself: signature, date of endorsement, and the competent authority stamp — on every page of a multi-page document, unless the pages are linked by a unique certificate number from the competent authority.
5. The laboratory’s identity: the report must come from the testing laboratory, not a forwarding laboratory.

What to submit, and what not to

Scans go with the permit application; the originals travel with your animal.

Submit documents in English or bilingual, legible, and with multi-page documents kept as a single file rather than separate images. For more than one pet, name each file for its animal.

Do not add documents nobody asked for — photographs, medical details, routine vaccination records, pet passports. They do not strengthen the application; they slow the assessment down, and the assessment queue is strictly in order of receipt.

What this page does not tell you

• What a specific certificate looks like, or which template your country uses.
• Whether a discrepancy in your case is fatal — that is a judgement for your competent authority and the department, and it should be raised early rather than at the airport.
• Arrival checks, where these documents are examined against the animal.