Hatchery Standard

The following Best Aquaculture Practices Standards apply to all aquaculture hatchery and nursery facilities that produce eggs and/or juvenile aquatic animals for live transfer to other aquaculture facilities and to all species for which BAP farm standards are available. Production facilities can be ponds or tanks on land with directed inflows and outflows of water, trays located intertidally on the foreshore, or rafts or net pens (cages) floating in a body of water. For the purposes of this standard, “hatchery” or “hatcheries” will be the generic terms used to describe such facilities.” Throughout this document the term “hatchery” also includes nursery. In the case of multi-phase hatchery operations under a single company’s ownership, depending upon the physical locations of facilities and other factors, the scope of the annual third-party audit may be limited to the final phase of production preceding transfer or sale of live aquatic products to a farm where the animals are grown to harvestable size for human consumption. Other affiliated “upstream,” production operations must be internally audited under the full scope of the BAP Hatchery and Nursery Standard. 
Processes that may occur within the general scope of hatchery operations include: 
- Broodstock acquisition, production, selection, and management 
- Mollusk spawning and larval setting 
- Egg collection, fertilization, incubation, and hatching 
- Larval rearing 
- Feeds and feeding practices 
- A nursery phase or intermediate juvenile production phase before final grow out that may itself consist of one or more stages 
- Treatment of animals to induce sterility, manipulate gender or achieve protective immunity against pathogens, or to treat or protect against disease. 
Except in the case of certain mollusk species, the collection and rearing of eggs, larvae, or juveniles from the wild for use as stocking material in hatcheries or farms is not included nor permitted under these standards. 
The above processes may be carried out in sequence at one location or in multiple locations with live aquatic products transferred between them. For facilities with multiple locations, each location shall be considered a separate facility for BAP certification. Some requirements may only apply to specific production systems (e.g., earthen pond facilities, facilities that produce effluents, or facilities using net pens). Each section of the standard and guideline identifies which specific standards apply to the different production systems.