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About the AATP

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Please note that this content is under development and is not ready for implementation. This status message will be updated as content development progresses.

Overview​

The Australian Agriculture Traceability Protocol (AATP) is an adaptation of the UN Transparency Protocol and is designed to help Australian producers meet emerging environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulatory and consumer requirements in both domestic and export markets.

The AATP is not a new system or platform, rather it is a digital standard that facilitates interoperability between existing systems and platforms. In much the same way as interoperability standards for banking and telecoms allow us to choose any bank and any telecom provider and still be confident that we can pay anyone or call anyone irrespective of the other party's bank or teleco, so the AATP allows all actors in an agriculture value chain to use their preferred systems and platforms without any dependency on other actor's choices.

Operating as a governance framework, the AATP facilitates the interaction between certifiers, farm systems, and enterprise systems. Interoperability and traceability tools help the Australian agriculture sector attain higher quality information about the value of Australian-made products. The protocol provides Australian producers with the opportunity to simplify their compliance activities by enabling consistent sharing of data (Interoperability) with their customers at the level of the consignment (or other product identifier. E.g. National Livestock Identification System ID). The data shared could include information that enables a supplier to access a market or get an increased price by offering greater value.

Built on open standards and supported by open-source tools, producers will be the first to realise value, as they will determine the data they share. Our guidance to producers using the protocol is that if you aren’t getting an advantage (commercial or market access) for sharing your data – then don’t do it. The standards used are open, industry accepted and already used pervasively. Traceability is a key outcome from implementing the protocol. This outcome is achieved when each participant shares the traceability information with the next participant in the supply chain. This chain of traceability information is attached to the product identifier – so the traceability information can skip steps in the supply chain with low technical maturity.

An Extension of the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP)​

The UNTP is an international standard for traceability and transparency in value chains. It is industry and geography agnostic and provides a suite of foundational tools that empower communities to extend the UNTP to meet their specific industry and geographical needs. For example, the UNTP defines a standard for a generic Digital Product Passport that AATP has extended to become a Digital Livestock Passport by adding Bovine Characteristics and Health Treatments.

The UNTP defines a standard methodology to create extensions so that they remain interoperable with other industry extensions. THis increases the value to AATP implementers because livestock passports and other AATP credentials will still be usable by downstream industry sectors and export markets. For example, in the value chain from cotton farm to t-shirt there will be many different industries and geographies but when each builds on a common UNTP core then the common data is understandable and usable across the entire value chain.

The UNTP is itself under ongoing development and maintenance. AATP is one of several UNTP extensions and there are expected to be at least 100 extensions registered over the next few years. The UN target for global adoption is 1 million UNTP (or extension) product passports issued every day by 2030.

This Site​

This AATP website is designed to take potential AATP implementers through a journey from awareness to implementation.

  • About AATP describes the purpose of AATP, how it is governed, how to keep track or participate, and provides answers to common questions. It answers the question "What is AATP?".
  • Business Case describes the value proposition for each stakeholder type and provides templates to assist sustainability managers with the development of a business case for implementation. It answers the question "Why should I implement AATP?".
  • Specification documents the AATP technical specifications as UNTP extensions and is targeted at the technical staff who will integrate systems to conform to AATP.
  • Guidance Describes the sequence of implementation activities and includes specific rules for each agriculture sector (livestock, horticulture, grains). It answers the question "How do I implement AATP?".
  • Register Provides a list of implementers that have either committed to AATP or have completed and tested their AATP implementation. It answers the question "Who is implementing AATP?".