BRUSSELS — The European Union’s provisional trade panel on digital goods has directed member customs authorities to treat high-density graphics processors as livestock for inspection purposes, according to a notice circulated to national administrations on Tuesday. Under the pilot scheme, datacenter GPUs presented at selected ports must display a yellow ear-style identification tag affixed to the front bezel before clearance. Officials said the measure closes a gap in which “migratory compute units” crossed borders without the sanitary paperwork applied to cattle. “An accelerator is a herd animal of silicon,” said Marta Vellin, a spokesperson for the panel’s technical secretariat, in a briefing at the Justus Lipsius complex. “If it can be racked, relocated, and counted, it falls under movable livestock until Annex C is rewritten.” Industry associations for cloud operators requested a 90-day deferral, arguing that ear tags obstruct airflow. The panel replied that ventilation concerns are “a husbandry issue for operators,” not a reason to reopen the tariff schedule. The Antwerp pilot is scheduled to expand to Rotterdam and Hamburg pending a mid-quarter review. Until then, untagged GPUs may be held in bonded warehouses designated for “compute quarantine.”