Research glossary
Definitions of the core terms used across Altibbé Research. Each entry is structured for citation and for extraction by machine readers.
Product intelligibility
The capacity to understand what a product is, how it was produced, what evidence exists, and what remains undeclared — as distinct from whether it is admissible or compliant.
Intelligibility is the layer above admissibility. Two products can both clear the same threshold yet differ in everything that distinguishes them. Intelligibility names the gap between the threshold being met and the product being understood.
Related:Admissibility vs intelligibility · SGPIS-GQ-01 — Certification as Minimum Threshold
Non-accumulation in product information
The structural condition where product information is generated at each supply chain stage but does not aggregate into a portable, reusable record.
Each system captures what it was built to capture. None carries the full account forward. The producer’s knowledge, the inspector’s record, the trade document, the buyer’s log — each is complete in itself and none combines into a usable product profile.
The disclosure layer
A layer of product-level information — origin, practices, claims, evidence, and gaps — structured for portability alongside existing operational systems.
Operational documentation answers admissibility. Product understanding requires a complementary layer that operates above the threshold. The disclosure layer is the institutional category Altibbé names for this missing infrastructure.
Related:Read the institutional note
Producer-declared information
Information about a product stated by the producer, structured according to a disclosure methodology, and made available for reuse by buyers, institutions, and markets.
Attribution is preserved at every downstream reading. The producer remains the source of record; intermediaries do not rewrite the declaration. Source-attributed declaration is what distinguishes disclosure from broker-mediated description.
Related:HEDAMO bridge
Portable product profile
A structured record of producer-declared product information that can be reused across buyers, institutions, and markets.
Portability is the test. If a profile must be reconstructed for each new buyer relationship, the system has not solved the underlying problem. A portable profile travels once, is attributed, and is read many times.
Structural Gaps in Product Information Systems (SGPIS)
A research series published by Altibbé examining where product-level information breaks across food systems.
Each paper studies a different system — nutrition labels, certification, trade documentation, geographic indication, traceability, India’s information stack. Across them, a recurring pattern: each system performs its bounded function, but no system carries the product’s account forward.
Related:View the SGPIS catalogue
Admissibility vs intelligibility
Admissibility asks whether a product meets a regulatory or market threshold. Intelligibility asks whether a product can be understood. They are structurally separate.
A certification confirms admissibility within a scheme. It does not confirm intelligibility. The two questions require different information layers; conflating them is the most common drift in food-system documentation.