Tagging Overview

The Tagging service allocates unique, official identification numbers for cattle, sheep, and goats in Great Britain. These identifiers support livestock traceability and help government and industry respond quickly to disease outbreaks.

The service is a free digital platform for approved tag manufacturers. It supports official tag ordering, replacement tag ordering, and tag order validation against government policy and industry rules.

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

Approved tag manufacturers can use the service directly through its application or integrate their own sales platform through the API endpoints described in these pages. A new manufacturer must also have tags approved by the appropriate government agencies before those tags can be ordered.

More information on livestock tagging rules is available from the relevant government guidance.

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

Technical knowledge requirements and limitations

These pages assume the reader has the technical knowledge required to write software that uses REST APIs. They should be read alongside the online Swagger documentation. They describe the service interfaces exposed for ear tag manufacturers to integrate their systems with the Tagging service.

The APIs are an optional method of interacting with the service. A web application is available for manufacturers who choose not to integrate directly.

Business processes

Developers should be aware that several tag ordering business processes have changed since the Tagging service replaced legacy systems.

Mandatory fields

More mandatory information is required for tag orders than in the old systems. This includes tag colour. Red replacement tags are now ordered separately.

Tag IDs and colours

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

Unmatched tags

Unmatched tags occur when a tag pair is ordered from two separate manufacturers. If the primary tag is ordered first, no more primary tags can be ordered until the secondary tag is ordered. Unmatched tags apply to a single species and herd or flock.

Tattoos

If a keeper orders an EID sheep tag and applies a tattoo as the second identifier, the service must record the tattoo to balance the order. Tattoo is available as a common generic tag across manufacturers.

Important changes to data

The service issues new unique references for manufacturer IDs and approved tag IDs. The approved tag ID is used on all orders placed using the APIs.

Auditing and system use

All API use is recorded and a full audit history is kept. Misuse or attempted misuse may result in API access being withdrawn.

Data protection

Manufacturers can only see the full details of their own tags and orders. Information returned for replacement tags may be redacted where another manufacturer or previous tag order is involved.