Depending on where you live and how considerate your neighbors are, dog poop might be the bane of your existence or something you rarely have cause to think about (you lucky bastard). For one Italian town, the problem has apparently become so bad that authorities are requiring owners to submit their dogs for DNA testing in order to identify the dogs responsible for leaving their excrement in the streets.


According to The Guardian, the results of the DNA tests will be uploaded into a database that police can refer to when searching for the owners who let their dogs defecate with abandon. Once the owners are found, they could be fined anywhere from $317 to $1,140. Presumably, the police in Bolzano don’t have a lot of crime to be fighting.


The law that introduced this DNA testing required that the 45,000 dogs in the region be tested by the end of December 2023 before the program begins this month. That said, only 5,000 dogs have complied to date. The scheme is far from popular, particularly with owners who do pick up after their dogs and are nonetheless expected to pay $70 for the test.



The tests will be compulsory from the end of March, and owners who fail to register their pets face further fines. A provincial councilor, Arnold Schuler, told the newspaper Il Giornale that the database was still in the “implementation phase” and additional vets had been found to help with the testing. A member of the local Greens party, Madeleine Rohrer, argued that the initiative is “easier said than done,” and “it will only be an additional expense for the municipality and for the police, who have many other things to do.”


Filippo Maturi, the president of Assopets, an association for the protection of animal owners, described the law as “unjust” and claimed that it “does not solve the problem and which, above all, has enormous management costs.”


In short, it’s quickly become a truly shitty bureaucratic headache.