An open standard, and the platform that runs it
LITS (Livestock Identification & Traceability System) is a published API contract any vendor can build against, plus a multi-tenant platform that operates a sovereign registry for each nation. A national instance — illustrated on this site as ZLITS or MLITS — is the same standard, run for one country on its own government domain.
The record
- The authoritative system of record for animal identity, movement permits and health events
- Owned by the State, on a State domain
- One national ID per animal, held by the registry rather than any vendor
The standard
- An open, versioned API contract any vendor can build against on equal terms
- A public conformance suite, so integrations and the contract never drift
- Governed in the open, with a public changelog
Open as a standard, held as an implementation
The API contract, examples and conformance suite are open (Apache-2.0), so any vendor can integrate without a private agreement and no nation is locked in. Accredited integrators connect with their own per-operator keys; the reference implementation that runs a national registry is held by the operator.
Versioned and additive
Path-versioned (/v1); additive changes never break a client. Build against it and ignore the fields you don't consume.
Conformance-tested
A public conformance suite ties behaviour to the contract, so the standard and its implementations cannot drift apart.
Open governance
Changes go through a public process and changelog, so the standard stays vendor-neutral and outlives any one operator.
Build on the contract
Farm apps, abattoirs and auctions integrate against the published OpenAPI contract — equal terms, no lock-in. Accreditation, not ownership, is the gate.
- Build to the contract. Implement against the open LITS OpenAPI spec in a sandbox with test keys.
- Get accredited. Pass conformance testing for a live per-operator API key and the right to display the conformance mark.
- Submit and verify. Register animals, lodge movements and request certificates — only the competent authority issues and signs.