Granting salmonids a BKD-free health category

1. Learn about BKD and the requirements of the health monitoring programme.
2. Fill out the entry form as thoroughly as you can and submit it to the registry of the Finnish Food Agency. If you have fish ponds, submit the entry notification to the registry of the Finnish Food Agency of your domicile. If you have a fish farm, submit the notification to the registry of the Finnish Food Agency according to the area in which your site is located.

After joining, you are committed to ensuring that the terms and conditions of the programme are followed.

Make sure that

1. a municipal veterinarian inspects your fish farm once every calendar year. The minimum period between inspections is 6 months. If you have several hatcheries or fish ponds, they can be inspected with one inspection even if they are located on several municipalities. Hatcheries and fish ponds do not need to be inspected on-site. However, fish farms must be inspected on-site.
2. required samples are collected and sent to the Finnish FoodAgency to be tested for BKD. Samples are collected usually during the inspection visit. You can also send in samples at another time, if it is expedient for monitoring the disease. Talk to your municipal veterinarian during the inspection to decide together, if samples need to be sent in.
3. to notify the municipal veterinarian immediately if BKD symptoms are detected in your fish, or there are other reasons to suspect an infection of BKD. In such a case, you are not allowed to transfer the fish or their gametes to other sites that belong on the BKD monitoring programme.
4. your site, which belongs to the monitoring programme, only accepts

• salmonids or their gametes from a fish farming site that is classified in category 1 for BKD. You can check the site's health category from a register on Finnish Food Agency's website.
• gametes of wild salmonids only from brood fish that have been tested negative for BKD. For other salmonids, all brood fish are tested, but for grayling, common whitefish and vendace caught in the same place, 60 fish is enough.
• wild salmonids whose freedom from BKD has been confirmed through quarantine in accordance with an agreement with the Finnish Food Authority, or for which the transfer has otherwise been approved by a state veterinarian of the Finnish Food Authority.

Gametes can only be retrieved from a fish hatchery that contains gametes of wild fish, even if the hatchery is not a part of the voluntary health monitoring programme and has not been classified in category 1, as long as the wild brood fish have been tested appropriately. In this case, a copy of Finnish FoodAgency’s testing results of the wild brood fish will be attached to the recipient site’s accounts.

5. on top of other required accounting, you will keep record of the municipal veterinarian’s visits, samples and sampling results that are a part of the BKD programme.