Moving a Dog or Cat to Taiwan: The Complete Import Checklist

First, know your track

Taiwan's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency (APHIA) sorts arriving dogs and cats into two tracks based on where they've lived. Pets from designated rabies-free areas — Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Hawaii and a handful of others — take a light protocol with no titer test. Pets from everywhere else, including the US mainland, Canada, most of Europe and Southeast Asia, take the full rabies-origin protocol described below.

This checklist covers the full protocol; if you're on the light track, roughly half of it falls away. Either way, the items must happen in order — a step done out of sequence often doesn't count at all.

The ordered checklist

1. ISO microchip — before everything else

   • An ISO 11784/11785 chip (15 digits, 134.2 kHz) implanted and verified by scan.
   • Any vaccine given before the chip existed may be treated as if it never happened. Details in our microchip guide.

2. Rabies vaccination after the chip

   • An inactivated or approved recombinant rabies vaccine, given after the microchip and recorded against its number.
   • Your pet must be at least 90 days old at vaccination; the shot must be valid on arrival day.

3. FAVN rabies titer test

   • Blood drawn at least a set waiting period before import, tested at an APHIA-recognized laboratory, scoring ≥ 0.5 IU/mL.
   • This single test sets your earliest possible arrival date — the full mechanics are in our FAVN explainer.

4. APHIA import permit

   • Applied for through APHIA's e-permit system well before the flight — file at least 20 days ahead to be safe.
   • Every field must match the microchip record exactly: name spellings, chip number, breed, birth date. Mismatches are the most common cause of arrival trouble.

5. Quarantine space reservation (when applicable)

   • Pets on the rabies-origin track serve a short post-arrival quarantine; the space is booked in advance alongside the permit.
   • What that stay actually looks like: our quarantine guide.

6. Veterinary health certificate, endorsed

   • Issued within days of departure by an accredited vet, then endorsed by your country's veterinary authority (USDA in the US, APHA in the UK, etc.).
   • It must transcribe the chip number, vaccine data and titer result without a single digit of drift.

7. Flight booked as a live-animal shipment

   • Confirmed live-animal space in a pressurised, temperature-controlled hold — not just a passenger ticket with a note.
   • Airline selection matters more than most people expect: how to choose for Taipei routes.

8. Arrival at Taoyuan: inspection and release

   • APHIA reconciles the permit, certificate and a live chip scan at the airport.
   • Compliant paperwork means a same-day handover or a short, pre-booked quarantine; gaps mean delays at your expense.

Document summary

Route-specific rules

This checklist is the Taiwan-side core. Your origin country adds its own export layer on top — inspection bookings, notification windows, endorsement quirks. We've written those up corridor by corridor in the Pet Travel Hub, or you can get a quote and let one team run both sides of the paperwork.