The town of Volkach, Germany, is fed up with dog poo and determined to do something about it.

This month, the town council in the small Bavarian burg (dog population: approx. 400) will meet to approve a plan that's straight from a dystopian novel: they plan to build a DNA database of every dog in town. The purpose: to track down the dogs and irresponsible pet owners behind the unclaimed freight in the neighborhood.

According to Mayor Peter Kornell, the council plans to take either fur or saliva from all registered dogs in town, and create a master database of canine DNA.  Should the town council approve of the program, they will appoint a dog warden who will collect all errant feces and compare them to the database. 

Guilty owners would face fines, not to mention a puzzled "What's up?" look from their pooch.

“Any person who has trodden in their muck because their owners were too lazy or indifferent to clean up after them will know how distasteful and infuriating it is,” Kornell said. “So we aim to end it.”

Volkach is not the first place to attempt a doggy style cleanup. In Israel, the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva launched a similar trial program in September 2008, blending positive incentives in with the Big Brother approach. Owners who clean up after their dogs and place the waste in designated bins become eligible for pet food coupons and dog toys. Chief veterinarian Tika Bar-On, who came up with the plan, said, “My goal is to get the residents involved, and tell them that together, we can make our environment clean.”

Another proposal under consideration in Volkach is offering rewards of 20 Euros to citizens who rat on their neighbors' dogs. (The first step toward a doggie secret police, clearly.) The town has also considered distributing leaflets across the town reminding pet owners of their obligations, in lieu of a master DNA database.

The success of the poo cleanup plan in Volkach will be widely monitored, especially by nearby Berlin, where residents have clamored for stricter measures to control the excessive dog droppings  that soil the city’s footpaths and other public spaces. Massive debt, however, has stalled such efforts thus far.

As the global economy adjusts to major financial turbulence, one has to wonder whether this is the most efficient use of public money. There are other concerns as well. 

The town of Volkach doesn’t seem to have the authority to mandate DNA testing, for starters.  "Unfortunately, we have to do it voluntarily because there is nothing in the constitution about a dog DNA databank being enforceable," Mayor Kornell said. “But we are proceeding and hope to log every pooch.”

Even more troubling, the DNA database may not actually identify the pooping culprit. Professor Christoph Meissner of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Wuerzburg has expressed concerns.

"It is possible that dogs of the same race could have the same DNA profile. And from that it could be that the wrong dog will be held accountable for the 'crime' of fouling the footpath," Meissner said. A cottage legal industry of wrongful poo claims is not far behind.

There are larger issues at play here as well, even beyond the question of whether this is a good use of government time and resources. While just five or ten years ago comparing human and pet laws would have been virtually laughable, the last decade has seen some extraordinary activity in the field. Take the Great Ape Project for example, which seeks to obtain legal rights for, well, Great Apes. The project has achieved early successes in places like Spain, where the parliament approved resolutions to grant apes with the right to life, freedom of liberty, and protection from torture.

Many consider this the first step in granting broader rights to animals. “We are seeking to break the species barrier — we are just the point of the spear,” said the Spanish director of the Great Ape Project, Pedro Pozas.

If organizations like the Great Ape Project do get their way, towns like Volkach can expect to see legal challenges to programs like the dog DNA database. One day, in fact, the town's right to fine careless owners may be trumped by dogs' right to poo wherever they damn well please.

Careful, we're watching

Also of Interest:

[+] DNA: the new frontier in the civil liberties battle

[+] Government collecting DNA samples from everyone arrested