Glossary
The language of livestock traceability
Every term used across the standard, the platform and the guides — defined plainly. New here? Start with the how it works overview.
- Accreditation
- The process by which a vendor passes conformance and receives a live per-operator key and the right to display the conformance badge.
- BAITS
- Botswana's Animal Identification and Traceability System.
- Competent authority
- The government body, typically the veterinary department, empowered by law to compel identification, issue permits and sign certificates.
- Conformance suite
- A public test suite that checks an integration against the contract, so implementations and the standard cannot drift apart.
- EID
- Electronic identification: a tag, usually RFID, that can be read electronically rather than only by eye.
- EUDR
- The EU Deforestation Regulation: requires due-diligence statements, with geolocation, for certain commodities placed on the EU market, including cattle.
- Find-or-create
- The rule by which two vendors tagging the same animal converge on the same national ID instead of creating duplicates.
- FMD
- Foot-and-mouth disease: a highly contagious livestock disease controlled mainly by restricting animal movement.
- Holding
- A place where animals are kept — a farm, kraal or feedlot — identified for movement and geolocation.
- Keeper
- The person responsible for an animal. One keeper identity is reused across the whole platform.
- LITS
- Livestock Identification & Traceability System: the open standard, and the platform, for a national registry of animal identity, movement and health.
- MLITS
- An example national instance of LITS, named for Malawi. Used illustratively on this site; not a finalised, approached or designated system.
- Movement permit
- An authorisation to move animals from one place to another, checked against veterinary zones before it is issued.
- NAIT
- New Zealand's National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme.
- NamLITS
- Namibia's Livestock Identification and Traceability System.
- National ID
- The permanent identifier given to an animal for life — allocated once and never reissued, even after a tag change or a merge.
- NLIS
- Australia's National Livestock Identification System.
- Residency rung
- A level of data isolation a nation chooses — pool, dedicated, in-country silo, or State self-host.
- RFID
- Radio-frequency identification: the technology behind electronic ear tags, read without contact.
- System of record
- The single authoritative source for a piece of data. In LITS the registry — not any vendor app — is the system of record for animal identity.
- Traceability certificate
- A registry-signed document attesting to an animal's identity, movement or health, verifiable by anyone via a QR code.
- TRACES NT
- The EU's online system for sanitary certification and movement control, and for filing EUDR statements.
- Two-plane model
- The separation between the registry control plane (acts only the authority performs) and the client plane (where vendors and keepers submit and request).
- Veterinary zone
- An area with a defined disease-control status; movement across zone boundaries is regulated.
- ZLITS
- An example national instance of LITS, named for Zimbabwe. Used illustratively on this site; not a finalised or designated system.