Merda! Italian province orders all pooches DNA tested in poop pick-up crackdown
It’s a doggy-doo whodunnit.
A province in northern Italy has resorted to elaborate DNA testing to find four-legged perps whose owners don’t clean up after their furry friends defecate all over beautiful Bolzano.
Now, pooch parents are required to submit their pups for a DNA swab test as a tracing mechanism to easily identify culprits behind their droppings.
“Bolzano receives a few hundred complaints a year from citizens about improper management of public land. More than half are for dogs,” veterinary department director Paolo Zambotto told Reuters.
“Law enforcement could only catch three or four of them because they have to go there and set up some kind of stakeout.”
The fines — exempt to tourists and non-locals — span from €292 to €1,048 ($318 to $1,143).
However, Bolzano officials have their tails between their legs as only a small fraction of the 45,000 area dogs — about 5,000, just 11% — have complied so far, reported the Guardian.
“It is easier said than done,” local Green Party associate Madeleine Rohrer told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.
“It will only be an additional expense for the municipality and for the police, who have many other things to do.”
But the nabe near Austria isn’t the only locale with a bone to pick over dog poop.
Stateside, apartment complexes in Denver also instituted doggie DNA testing for the same reason, as did a town in France.
One complex in Washington state also mandated the test — another in Maryland did as well — for all residents’ pets.
