The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is accepting comments on its proposal to update its branding requirements for cattle entering the U.S. from Mexico.
The changes would simplify the branding requirements, making the brands easier to apply and read, reducing errors.
The Mexican government requested changes to address issues with the current branding requirements, including confusion between the Mx and MX brands used for spayed heifers and breeding cattle, respectively; the small size of the brands, which can cause blotching and require rebranding; and the rejection of animals at ports entry based on questions about whether they were branded correctly.
The proposed rule addresses these concerns by requiring an M brand for all cattle. The brand would also be larger in size for better readability.
These steps, USDA says, could help reduce branding errors. To make it easy to distinguish between feeder and breeding cattle, brands for breeding animals would be placed on the shoulder. Feeder cattle would continue to be branded on the back hip.
The proposed rule would still allow an MX ear tattoo option for breeding cattle, instead of a brand, because USDA says the tattoos have not posed a readability problem and are a permanent form of identification.
Cattle imported from Mexico would still require an approved ear-tag for traceability purposes.
USDA is already allowing Mexico to use the M brand on spayed heifers and breeding cattle as an alternate to the Mx and MX brands. The agency says it has reduced errors and confusion at border ports.
The proposed rule can be viewed online here.