Advancing FAIR Data Management in Livestock: Towards Standardized Metadata

The field of farm animals is embarking on a journey towards FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data management, which is also relevant to the 3R (reduce, replace, refine) principle for animal testing. However, metadata standardisation remains a major challenge, as it is often overlooked due to the absence of a commonly accepted standard in the livestock community. As a starting point and regarding the species-specific projects PIGWEB and IGG, we focus mainly on phenotypic data. The FBN is also part of the NFDI4Biodiversity project. In this context, a comparative analysis of established and ratified standards was conducted. ABCD standard proved a promising candidate for establishing standardised metadata, as it is very flexible and allows the integration of missing terms. Moreover, the ABCD may also serve as a basis for other livestock data. This work highlights the imperative of adopting standardised metadata practices to enhance FAIR data in respect to accessibility, reusability and interoperability.