[CentOS] different MAC address, ignoring

I think a recent update changed the behavior of ifup on systems where the drives were moved or cloned and at boot time have a different MAC address than the one found in the corresponding interface file under /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts or /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/. Now the interface is ignored with an error message about having a different MAC address than expected. I frequently update remote machines by shipping configured swappable drives so this becomes an interesting problem.

However, it seems to be intended behavior so instead of reporting it as a bug, I'd like to know the correct procedure to prepare a drive to run in an unknown target machine and where this might be documented.