Arkansas Administrative Code
Agency 209 - Arkansas Agriculture Department
Division 02 - State Plant Board
Rule 209.02.07-003 - Circular 21: Rules on Aquaculture in Arkansas - Official Standards for the Certification of Commercial Bait and Ornamental Fish in Arkansas

To provide high quality, farm-raised bait and ornamental fish, free of certain diseases, undesirable plants, undesirable animals, and other contaminates deemed injurious to fish or fisheries.

The Arkansas State Plant Board, a division of the Arkansas Agriculture Department, under act 1449 of 2005, is the official certifying agent.

Within the detection limits of the appropriate official testing protocol, commercial bait and ornamental fish meeting these standards are certified free of the pathogens, plants, animals and other contaminates listed here:

To be designated as Arkansas Certified, bait and ornamental fish must:

Farmers wishing to have their fish certified under these guidelines must make application on official Plant Board forms.

As part of the application process, farmers (the individual holding the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Fish Farmer Permit) must sign an affidavit agreeing to strictly adhere to the following cultural practices and business procedures:

The Director of the State Plant Board or his agent may conduct investigations and/or make inspections as necessary to assure conformity with these standards. In particular, at least annually, the Plant Board shall make an on farm inspection of water sources, ponds, fish handling areas, equipment and records offish sales and purchases.

As part of this annual inspection, an inspector from the Plant Board will visit the farm once per year during the summer. A visual check of 50% of the total number of ponds on the farm will be made for snail species, zebra mussels and specific aquatic plants. All of the ponds must be inspected at least once every 2 years. One pond edge will be examined for listed plants and snails and a hard surface (e.g., pier, post, drainpipe, aerator float) will be checked for zebra mussels. Any suspect plants or mollusks will be collected and submitted to an expert for confirmation. For fish species, visual inspection of farm holding vats will be conducted to insure that certified fish species being held in vats do not contain the listed ANS. Farm records will be examined for evidence of commerce in listed species.

In addition to Plant Board inspections, as part of the bi-annual sampling offish for disease testing, the independent agent sampling fish will make note of the observance of any aquatic nuisance species. The Agent will preserve any unidentified fish species taken as a part of normal sampling procedures and submit those specimens along with disease testing samples to an independent APHIS approved laboratory for identification.

Farms that do not pass these inspections may not label or represent their fish as certified until all aquatic nuisance species have been eradicated and confirmed by a successful inspection. In addition, in order to maintain their certified status, these farms will undergo an additional aquatic nuisance species inspection one month after the first successful post eradication inspection. This follow up inspection will not be conducted during a period when the aquatic nuisance species would not be expected to be present, but will occur when conditions for detection are favorable.

Each year, the certified producer or new applicants, must provide documentation of two consecutive years of disease free status from an independent laboratory approved by APHIS to test for the listed pathogens. Sampling, analysis and reporting is to be conducted as follows:

The sample must be 150 fish and must include moribund (sick) fish observed during the sampling process. It must be collected twice per year. Once during the months of October, November or December and once during the months of March, April or May.

Collection of the sample must be overseen by an APHIS accredited DVM. The collection must be made under the direct observation of the overseer to an extent that the official can attest to the origin of the fish and that the sampling scheme was appropriate to meet the standards detailed below.

The sample should include all of the ponds and grow out tanks and the final species and age composition of the sample should reflect the overall composition of the certified fish on the farm. For example, if the farm has 5 ponds of koi and 10 ponds of goldfish to be certified, the final sample of 150 fish should be from all of the ponds and should be 33 % koi and 67 % goldfish with each pond offish equally represented. For a 150 fish sample, you would need 50 koi (10 from each of the 5 ponds), and 100 goldfish (about 10 from each of the 10 ponds). For farms with more than 50 ponds, all species and sizes offish must be included in each sample, but the ponds may be sampled in rotation so that all ponds are sampled at least once every two years.

It is not appropriate to sample fish from shipping and sorting facilities where fish are held for brief periods. The origin of these fish cannot be known with certainty and they may represent only a very low percentage of the fish lots present on the farm. Small numbers of some species may be efficiently captured with a dip net along the pond margin; other species may have to be captured with a small seine. In some cases, fish traps are appropriate. They may be placed in the ponds by the farmer but the sampling official must be present to oversee the checking of the traps and the removal offish from the traps for the sample. Fish collected and removed from the ponds by the farmer without direct supervision by the overseer are not appropriate. Be sure to include any moribund fish that are observed during the sampling.

Farms testing positive for a listed pathogen may not label or represent their fish as certified until they have undergone a Plant Board supervised eradication, disinfection, re-establishment with fish from a certified source and have then re-established a 2-year history of disease free inspections according to the rules of this program. All Plant Board fees must be paid during the re-establishment period.

Producers accepted into the certification program will be issued official certificates, which are to be completed at the time the fish are loaded. Certificates are valid until the fish leave the certified producer's control. All certificates will bear the shipment date and shipper invoice number along with description of the shipment. All will expire within 2 weeks of issuance.