Dec 4, 2010 14:31 GMT  ·  By
New program PooPrints would allow for irresponsible owners of dogs to be tracked down through DNA testing
   New program PooPrints would allow for irresponsible owners of dogs to be tracked down through DNA testing

If you ever had the “pleasure” of stepping into dog poop on your way to work or when out for a jog / walk, you should be happy to know you will soon be able to admonish the owner who didn’t scoop it, thanks to a new program called PooPrints.

PooPrints is developed by Bio Pet Vet Lab on the premise that unscooped dog waste has become a real problem in the US (and other countries as well), where about 40 percent of all poop remains lying around.

Not only is this dog waste an unsightly thing to come across, but the issue also has health implications, PooPrints says. Thus, the need to track down owners who don’t do their part to scoop the poop.

As BusinessInsider notes, this could be a million-dollar idea because it would allow for authorities to track down all those who neglect this (rather unpleasant) part of the responsibility of dog ownership.

If you think that, in the US alone, over 6 billion pounds of dog waste are generated annually – enough to “fill 800 football fields one foot deep,” – this is clearly no laughing matter, especially since 40 percent of it goes unscooped.

“PooPrints is a program that uses technology to help communities enforce dog waste rules by tracking the poo’s DNA. Communities that sign up receive supply kits for DNA collection and store the DNA of every dog in the community,” the e-zine says.

“The PooPrints lab creates a registry of all the samples received so if any unswept mess is left on the streets, the delinquent owner of the offender can be easily tracked down,” BusinessInsider says.

“To ‘report’ the unattended mess, a passerby needs to collect and send a sample to the lab. The lab then matches the poo, to the pup, to the person,” the e-zine further notes of how easily the system would function.

However, there could be a downside to this idea: if the dog’s owner wouldn’t pick up the gross mess, would a passerby do it? BussinesInsider thinks the idea is brilliant in theory – but it would take a paid person to do “the dirty work,” not average neighbors looking for cleaner communities.