I will add a caveat to Rod's comment.
Missouri Dept. of Conservation employees are notoriously ignorant of the law - especially the enforcement division folks.
Ignorance of the law being no excuse, written permission from a low level bureaucrat in the department is likely useless
in court if that written permission is contradictory to the code. In a situation like this, if I were bound and determined to
put tilapia in my pond, I wouldn't do it on anything less than a personally signed letter from the Director, and even then
I'd think long and hard before pulling the trigger on a purchase. You would now be on their radar for stocking a species
that is not expressly permitted, and the next Director may not be sympathetic to your situation.
You might find a sympathetic judge, but I wouldn't count on that to get me out of the wringer.
Reminding you again that I'm not an attorney, my personal advice is don't be the crash test dummy. Let someone else
get busted for illegal fish and see what the courts have to say about it before stocking tilapia in the waters of Missouri.
