Dog owners in the southern French city of Béziers now need to watch their step carefully after the mayor Robert Ménard introduced a mandatory canine-DNA database in a bid to combat excrement in the city’s streets.
“I’m fed up with all the poop,” said Ménard.
“We’ve done a count. We collect over a thousand each month. Sometimes many more, in the downtown area alone. We can’t let this go on any longer,” he added.
To be taken for a walk in the city centre, all dogs will now require a “digital passport” with genetic information gleaned from a saliva test.
The passports, issued by a veterinarian, will be free. “[The test] only takes five minutes,” said the mayor.
Failure to provide the passport will incur a fine of €38 for owners and those who do not pick up their pet’s droppings for suitable disposal will be billed €122.
There would be a “certain flexibility” for tourists and other travellers from elsewhere, Ménard said.
The dog-poop initiative was something of a pet project for Ménard, who made a similar attempt in 2016, although that effort was overturned at the Montpellier administrative court as being “too intrusive”.
But this time, there were no appeals before a two-month window for objections expired on July 13.
The new system will operate for two years. “The two-year experiment can now begin,” the mayor declared in French media.
Valencia and other municipalities in Spain, Italy and the UK had also introduced compulsory genetic records for dogs, said Ménard.
But as far as France is concerned, the Béziers mayor seems to have got the scoop.
