FEI rules on branding?

[goldenrow]

I was recently told that the FEI would no longer allow horses that have been branded after a certain date to compete in FEI competitions. Does anyone have any info to support this?

We live in an area of the US where horses are known to get stolen and auctions do not use microchip scanners. We also have brand inspections by the state.

Having a brand makes sense in our area, and I appreciate the additional form of identification and awareness that it brings to a horse that may end up in a bad situation.

However, I also don’t want to cap a horse’s career by having it branded, but then not be able to compete at a higher level.

Does anyone have any insight? Is someone better at Googling than me?

[Knubbsy]

I have a hard time believing this would be accepted until all European studbooks stop offering branding as an option and/or all horses that have been branded by the studbooks have died out.

A quick search didn’t turn anything up using variations of “brand” (hot brand, freeze brand, brand*, etc) + FEI/federation equstre internationale. Only results are on using brands in the physical ID and then the marketing type of branding.