Foul play calls for Doggy DNA

One familiar theme I am, erm, picking up on the doorsteps is that of dog fouling.  Yes, pesky pooch poop is really getting on residents nerves and it appears, their shoes and buggies.

The vast majority of dog owners out there, as we all know, are responsible and will bag it and bin it.  Some may bag it and lay it beside the bins but thats another matter or another day.  The Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003 was brought in to help deal with this and give local authorities have to right to issue fixed penalty notices.

Last year, after reading about a scheme in a suburb of New York, I was interested in the programme being run there which saw DNA samples being taken of the poo which would allow the guilty party to be tracked down and dealt with accordingly.

Therefore, could you imagine my surprised and delight last week when I read not one, but two articles from the UK where local authorities have been considering this very topic.

Hyndburn borough council in Lancashire are in discussions with a forensic vet over plans to analyse dog dirt found on pavements and in parks according to a report in the Telegraph, whilst even closer to home in the village of Castletown in Caithness, a similar scheme is being investigated.

Greater visual deterrents are required to highlight (I still can't believe people have to reminded, but lets go with this) to prevent irresponsible owners from just leaving it on the pavements and in the parks.  Perhaps I would tone it down a notch from Hastings Borough Council's poster campaign of 2010 however, getting the kids in the local primary schools to design a poster or two to put up in the area would be a great start.

What is also clearly needed is education over the reasons why it is vitally important to pick up after your dog has done its business.  Toxocariasis, for example, is a potentially lethal disease carried in dog faeces which can also blind.

The practicalities of imposing a scheme like this in somewhere as big as Edinburgh would be subject of course to some fine tuning - and it's likely to be a voluntary basis with a database needing to be drawn up and costs worked out.  Perhaps there could be a trial in a ward within the City or one of the four Neighbourhood Partnership areas.

It will be interesting to see how the other local authorities move on with this and if elected, I'd like to look at this again in greater detail.

Until then, if all the good guys out there could tell the bad guys to bag it and bin it and the Environmental Wardens continue to patrol the City, then we are continue to fight against faeces.