DNA latest weapon in tracking down dog-dirt deniers in Spanish town

Dog DNA is to become the latest weapon used to track down dog owners who fail to clear up the "mess" made by their dog after it has gone to the toilet in the street.

The town of Mislata in the Community of Valencia in the east of Spain on Wednesday published its plan entitled "They would do it if they could" to stop dog owners walking away leaving their pet's excrement in the street.

The town of just over 40,000 inhabitants has ordered all residents to take their dogs for mandatory blood samples by the end of the year. The DNA of the animals will then be extracted from the blood and registered in a council database.

Then whenever street cleaners discover dog-dirt left in the street, the DNA of the animal who left it can be extracted from the feces, matched with the DNA in the database and the owner of the offending animal fined 200 euros (around 222 U.S. dollars).

"To avoid unpleasant feces that some owners forget on the street, the city has launched a DNA analysis system that identifies droppings ... Street cleaning staff will be responsible for collecting the sample to be guarded by the local police and then analyzed in a laboratory," states the website for the Mislata Local Authority.

Mislata is the latest in a series of towns to attempt to deal with the problem of dog-dirt, with Colmenar Viejo, to the north of Madrid, paying a private detective to track down negligent owners, while the town of Brunete, which is also close to Madrid, opened a scheme which saw excrement mailed back to the dog owner's home.

Meanwhile Hernani in the Basque Region and the city of Tarragona, south of Barcelona, also operate DNA schemes to identify "culprits" who fail to clean up after their dogs. Endit