Authorities in an Italian province are planning to use mandatory DNA testing to cut down on the amount of dog mess on its streets.
Dog owners in the northern province of Bolzano – South Tyrol will be required to submit their pets’s DNA to a genetic database.
Once the database is large enough, street cleaners and health officials will be able to collect abandoned dog poo, cross-reference any residual DNA with the system, then trace and fine dog owners.
Registered dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets will face fines of €50 to €500 (£43 to £430), while owners who refuse to comply with DNA profiling will have to pay between €292 and €1048 (£250 and £899).
Dog owners in the northern province of Bolzano – South Tyrol will be required to submit their pets’s DNA to a genetic database.
Wikimedia Commons
There are almost 40,000 dogs in the area, a quarter of which have already been registered, according to veterinary department director Paolo Zambotto.
The law required dog owners to take their pooches to blood tests at clinics or municipal dog shelters by the end of December 2023.
DNA registration will be compulsory from the end of March, with owners required to pay between €65 (£55) and over €100 (£85).
Zambotto said: “Bolzano receives a few hundred complaints a year from citizens about improper management of public land. More than half are for dogs.
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Owners who refuse to comply with DNA profiling will have to pay between €292 and €1048 (£250 and £899)
PA
“Law enforcement could only catch three or four of them because they have to go there and set up some kind of stakeout.”
Zambotto did not provide the project’s estimated cost, but the hefty fines are expected to pay for any detection and administration expenses.
Madeleine Rohrer, from the local Greens party, said: “It will only be an additional expense for the municipality and for the police, who have many other things to do.”
Filippo Maturi, president of pet owners’ association Assopets, said: “It is an unjust law which does not solve the problem and which, above all, has enormous management costs.”
The law will only apply to locals, with tourists and non-residents exempted from the restrictions.
Bolzano Veterinary Association president Franz Matthäus Hintner said the law “serves no purpose” and complained that tourists’ dogs would not be tested.
It won’t just be used to clean up streets, said provincial councillor Arnold Schuler, adding that the system could be used to identify pets in road accidents and dogs which attacked people or other animals.
A similar scheme had been tried in Béziers in France last year, and Paolo Zambotto said other Italian cities had been in touch.
