---
id: "eu_bovine_id"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["agriculture"]
country: ["EU"]
langs: ["common"]
quality: 75
url: "https://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/eu_bovine_id"
---

# EU bovine animal identification code (ear tag number) (`eu_bovine_id`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Unique code carried by the two ear tags or the electronic identifier of a kept bovine animal in the European Union under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/520. It is the country code of the Member State where the animal was first tagged, as ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 letters (EL for Greece, XI for Northern Ireland) or three digits, followed by an individual code of at most 12 digits. Ear tags often print the digits in groups. Older alphanumeric codes of some countries are not covered.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Agriculture, livestock and food (agriculture)
- Countries: European Union (EU)
- Languages: Common to most languages (common)
- Classification: identifier

## Detection

Regular expression (Python `re`):

```
^(?:[A-Z]{2}|\d{3}) ?(?:\d ?){0,11}\d$
```

## Examples

- `UK 555555 3 00002` — Illustration of a UK ear tag number from ScotEID
- `UK555555200001` — Illustration of a UK ear tag number from ScotEID, without spaces
- `DE0123456789012` (invalid example) — The individual code has 13 digits

## Sources

- doc: <https://www.scoteid.com/Public/Documents/Bovine_EID_numbering.pdf>
- doc: <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2021/520/oj>

## Quality

Score 75/100. Missing: mapping (Wikidata, Schema.org, ...), translation, detector coverage.

JSON: <https://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/eu_bovine_id.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/EU/agriculture/eu_bovine_id.yaml>