Overview

The Livestock Unique Identification Service (LUIS) allocates unique, official identification numbers for cattle, sheep, and goats in Great Britain, forming the foundation for livestock traceability and enabling quick responses to disease outbreaks.

LUIS is a free digital platform that enforces compliance with government policies and industry standards, ensuring that livestock keepers remain compliant when tagging their animals.

To order new official tags a keeper must be registered as a keeper with APHA and RPA and have a valid CPH. They must also have a valid herd / flock mark for the animals that they keep. Replacement tags can only be ordered for animals that are alive and present on the keepers holding.

LUIS is primarily used by government approved tag manufacturers to register official tag numbers. Tag manufacturers can use LUIS services directly through the UI by arranging access through the LUIS support team at luis@livestockinformation.org.uk or can integrate their own sales platform through a series of API end points specified in the following pages. A new manufacturer must also have tags approved by the appropriate government agencies who will ensure that these tags are available in LUIS to be ordered.

Currently LUIS offers services to order new official tags, order official replacement tags or to cancel orders that are made in error, or if the tags are lost or damaged before they are registered to an individual animal. Please note that order cancellations are only available through the UI currently.

More information on the rules relating to livestock tagging can be found on the appropriate government websites.

• Get new or replacement official ear tags for cattle
• Tag sheep with ear tags, pastern bands and boluses

Technical Knowledge Requirements and Limitations

The document assumes that the reader has the necessary technical knowledge required to write the software required to use these APIs. It should be read in conjunction with the online Swagger documentation. It is a developer's guide to the service and its functions. It does not provide details on how to implement this within a ETMs application, as each one will be unique and is the responsibility of the ETMs. It describes and specifies the API service interfaces that will be exposed for Ear Tag Manufacturers (ETM's) to integrate their systems with the LUIS application. These APIs are used within the LUIS User Interface (UI). ETMS can use the UI to validate results and see how the APIs perform. The APIs are an optional method of interacting with LUIS and a web application is available for those who choose not to do so.

Business Processes

Developers should be aware that several of the business process that surround tag ordering have been changed since LUIS replaced legacy systems:

Mandatory Fields

More mandatory information is required about the tag order than in the old systems. This includes Tag Colour and red replacement tags that are now ordered seperately.

Tag Ids and Colours

Tag Ids and colours can be obtained using the Manufacturer's Approved Tags API. The tag colours are case sensitive.

Unmatched Tags

There is now the concept of unmatched tags. This occurs when a pair of tags is ordered from 2 separate ETMs. If the primary is ordered first, until the secondary tag is ordered no more primary tags can be ordered. Unmatched tags only relate to a single species and herd/flock. i.e. if a keeper has cattle and sheep , unmatched cattle tags would not prevent an order being placed for sheep tags.

Tattoos

If a keeper orders an EID sheep tag and applies a tattoo as the second identifier, LUIS must record the tattoo to balance the order. A Tattoo has been created as a common generic tag across all manufacturers and must be selected to remove the unmatched tags.

Important Changes to Data

LUIS will issue new unique references for the following:

• Manufacturer Id
• New tag reference numbers for all tags. This is known as "Approved_Tag_Id" and is used on all orders placed using the APIs

It is hoped that the manufacturer id and the Approved_Tag_Id issued on the test system will be the same as the live system. Manufacturers will need to double check this before moving into production

Auditing and System Use

All use of the APIs within LUIS is recorded and a full audit history is kept. Any misuse or attempted misuse of the APIs may result in them being withdrawn from that ETM.

Data Protection

ETMs can only see the full details of their own tags and orders. While it is possible sometimes to see some information about an order when ordering replica tags, the information returned has been redacted to hide the other ETM or tags previously ordered. The APIs below are returning the full data set and are based on the order being solely for that manufacturer.