Photo: 416styleYes, it sounds like a ridiculous idea, and you may have been among those who laughed, or worse, when we first proposed it: In order to keep a city’s streets clean of dog poop, require dog owners to submit DNA samples from their pets when they get licenses; then use that DNA database to trace any left-behind poop and send the dogs’ owners stiff fines.
Well, it took three years but the Israeli city of Petah Tikva has actually put this plan to work:
The city will use the DNA database it is building to match feces to a registered dog and identify its owner.
Owners who scoop up their dogs’ droppings and place them in specially marked bins on Petah Tikva’s streets will be eligible for rewards of pet food coupons and dog toys.
But droppings found underfoot in the street and matched through the DNA database to a registered pet could earn its owner a municipal fine.
It is interesting — and probably wise — that Petah Tikva has coupled the penalties with rewards. Clearly, their plan is a bit more thought-out than ours:
“My goal is to get the residents involved, and tell them that together, we can make our environment clean,” said Tika Bar-On, the city’s chief veterinarian who came up with the idea for the DNA experiment. Bar-On said the DNA database could also help veterinarians research genetic diseases in dogs, investigate canine pedigree, and identify stray animals, replacing the need for electronic chip identification.
As for me, a New York resident: well, I am still waiting, and not so patiently. It still astonishes me that the same person who will glare at someone for speaking loudly on a cell phone or for not putting a bottle in the right recycling bin will let his dog defecate in the middle of a grassy area in Central Park where kids play, and then do a minimal cleanup, if at all. Unless we can get the DNA plan rolling here, I may have to start agitating all-out for mandatory dog diapers.
(P.S.: I realize this is my second poop-related post in two days; I apologize, and promise to clean up my act.)
(Hat tip: Mat Davis, Sendhil Revuluri, several others)
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All of the actual problems in the world, and people want to spend resources to DNA-test dog poop? Please tell me it’s actually April Fools’ Day.
This was an April Fool’s joke in our paper a few years ago. I still consider it that.
I’d tax dog owners to finance the cleaning of the mess some leave behind daily
Wow, as pleasing as it is to imagine the actual people at fault being fined, is this really a cost-effective way of cleaning up poop? I’m surprised that DNA testing is cheaper than hiring a minimum-wage employee to go around cleaning up debris of all sorts.
If this is so cheap and cost-effective, how about DNA testing of discarded cigarette butts at the beach? In California everyone is banned from smoking on state beaches, ostensibly because SOME smokers discard their butts in the sand.
How are they going to enforce that everyone registers his or her dog? If the town doesn’t have a DNA sample for your dog, then you will still have free reign to let your dog poop all over the place. If you voluntarily have a sample taken, then you are probably an owner who picks up the poop anyway, so there’s no point. A person who doesn’t like picking up the poop could just buy their dog from out of town, then the town would have no way to match the poop to their dog. Seems pretty pointless to me. I don’t think you’d ever be able to get DNA samples on even 50% of the dogs, let alone all of them, and the ones who have samples are likely dogs with owners who clean up afterwards.
I completely agree with #14, seems kind of ridiculous that you could assume that it is possible to keep tabs on every dog in a city, tracking strays, and keeping up with dog birth rates. Not to mention those sampled are those willing to comply with the law anyways.
If there was a way to implement this though, it should be quite effective. The carrot and the stick in the use of behavior modification should work together to help people stop polluting public grounds. People need to be taught to care about others through their own selfishness.
After living on the UWS (the capital of ridiculous dog owners) for 2 years, I have concluded that this would probably lead to riots of some sort. These rich folks with their $30,000 dogs unfortunately seem to think that THEIR dog is more important than ANYONE else in the world. What is great is that they’ll scoff at OTHER dog owners, but then let theirs just go wild right in front of someone else’s doorsteps. These are also the people who’ll yell at a biker, on a bike path, for almost hitting an unleashed dog that randomly decided to run out into traffic. UGH!
I still don’t understand why we tolerate dogs peeing on the street and not people. Is there REALLY a difference?
Yeah, I think it would become kind of difficult to keep track of every single dog’s DNA. What about stray dogs? What about lost dogs? How would they know in the DNA center when a dog changes owner? These issues all present complications for this system. I don’t disagree with this system; I think it’s a great idea, but I just can’t seem to avoid seeing the possible logistics failures of it.