A nibble for the economy

By David McGrath Schwartz

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | 2 a.m.

With lawmakers considering hundreds of pieces of weighty legislation to address the crises confronting Nevada, it’s perhaps understandable that the most buzzed about bill over the past week was a bit of puffery — a bill to legalize fish pedicures.

Yes, fish pedicures.

They’re a craze in Asia, according to bill author Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas.

People pay a nice sum in Korea, China, Taiwan and parts of Virginia to stick their feet into a tub of warm water containing small toothless carp, which gladly nibble dead skin from toes and bunions.

The Nevada Cosmetology Board has refused to license fish pedicures. State law allows only decorative aquarium fish or service animals in places of cosmetology, said Vincent Jimno, executive director of the Cosmetology Board.

State regulations for pedicures also require tools to be sanitized and disinfected after each treatment. That would be tough to do when your equipment is a live fish that costs as much as $10.

“We believe it’s not safe,” Jimno said. “They will eat material, process it through their digestive tract, and there could be diseases or bacterium, unsafe to human beings, in the water.”

Man Shing “Benny” Lee, president of the Las Vegas chapter of the Ying On Association, a group of Chinese-American business leaders, submitted an application with the Cosmetology Board in October for “holistic fish pedicures.” Lee planned to import the small carp from Turkey, where they reside in hot springs with temperatures from 75 to 90 degrees.

The board decided in November it would not regulate it.

Without that seal of approval, business operators like Lee, owner of Kingdom Foot Massage in Las Vegas, are leery of the $50,000 investment to provide the pedicures when it’s possible health officials could shut them down.

“Why say no?” Lee wondered, noting there is no evidence fish pedicures are unsafe. (The Cosmetology Board’s Jimno responds that there is no study that has found fish pedicures are safe.)

Segerblom sided with the pro-fish pedicurists.

“I’ve had my toes nibbled by the carp at Lake Mead,” he said.

In arguing for the bill, Segerblom used the tried-and-true Nevada reasoning that has led to legalized prostitution, gambling, quickie marriages and easy divorces.

“People have always come to Vegas to try something that is illegal everywhere else,” he said. “It’s something that would attract tourists to Las Vegas. And with the economy down, we could use it.”

Segerblom’s bill would require the Cosmetology Board to allow and regulate fish pedicures.

Jimno said his board opposes the bill. While there is a nationwide push in state legislatures to legalize fish pedicures, states such as Texas, Florida and Washington have made them illegal, he noted.

Nevada’s Legislature isn’t likely to rule one way or the other.

Segerblom’s bill, AB171, was introduced last month and referred to committee. It has yet to be heard, and the assemblyman doesn’t know whether it will be.

Serious-minded legislative leaders apparently have decided they have enough fish to fry without the skin-eating carp.