DNA nails U.S. owners who don't clean up after pets

[R.R]

Quote:By Zach Howard

CONWAY, Mass | Thu Jul 7, 2011 4:42am IST

Some U.S. pet owners who failed to clean up after their dogs got a nasty surprise from apartment complex manager Deb Logan.

Using DNA evidence, Logan started fining the irresponsible dog owners $100 per offense.

Logan, property manager at Twin Ponds in Nashua, New Hampshire, started using a dog DNA-testing system to reveal which pooches were leaving feces scattered about outside.

Logan says the DNA technology called "PooPrints", developed by BioPet Vet Labs of Knoxville, Tennessee, is working "amazingly" well for Twin Ponds, a 339-unit complex that is home to about 241 dogs.

"And for a property manager to not have to guess who the violator is, is absolutely wonderful," she told Reuters in a phone interview.

Dog-friendly Twin Ponds is BioPet's largest client using PooPrints to solve the mystery of who left the offending mound.

Using doggie DNA to solve the puzzle which dog left the feces is becoming increasingly popular in apartment complexes nationwide from Jupiter, Florida to Rockville Center, New York, where violators are fine up to $1,000 per steaming pile.

At Twin Ponds, all tenants with a dog now must use a PooPrints pet DNA sampling kit when they move in. To set up a profile, owners come to Logan's office, swab their dogs' cheeks for a saliva sample, and Twin Ponds then sends that to BioPet, which creates a reference database that includes all the community's canines.

When a canine deposit is left on the communal grounds, Twin Ponds mails BioPet a sample of feces to be matched to a dog through DNA. BioPet claims its testing has a 99.9 percent accuracy rate.

DNA is the individual biological coding that makes each creature unique.

"It's really not a Big Brother-type thing, and we don't test a lot of feces," said BioPet president Jim Simpson.

"So the program is doing what we want it to do and what the property manager wants it to do - simply to encourage folks to clean up after their dogs, so they don't have to have employees and services out there doing it," he said.

Simpson and Logan both believe the majority of pet owners are responsible people who dutifully clean up dog droppings.

But complaints about dog waste nationally have been piling up in recent years.

An average dog leaves behind 276 pounds (125.45 kilos) of feces a year, according to the PooPrints web site. And there are about 77.5 million owned dogs in the United States.

The problem of dog excrement hit No. 6 on the list of America's top gripes last year, according to a survey by Consumer Reports.

Experts say serious health and environmental concerns go along with unscooped pet waste.

Even though livestock account for the vast majority of animal waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dogs are significant contributors to source water contamination. Probably the greatest human health concern linked with animal waste is harmful pathogens like Cryptosporidium, Salmonella, Giardia lamblia and E. coli, the EPA says.

So far this year at Twin Ponds, Logan has issued about 20 fines to residents for failing to clean up after their dogs. If a resident refuses to pay, she begins eviction proceedings the following month.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/07/06...ws&rpc=401

[April]

Everything about this article bothers me! I worked for an apartment complex that used to rip all the tenants off!

Can you imagine having an eviction on your rental history over something like this ?

[Melchor]

Um, so what? First, people shouldn't be letting their dogs shit wherever. Second, if a landlords want to contractually put restrictions on their tenants use of the leased land, they can do that. This article doesn't highlight 'big brother' so much as it highlights the fact that too many people are lazy douches who literally leave shit for others to clean up. That is of course, unless somehow all dna related activities are now some kind of de facto police state measures.

Since you didn't provide any insight into what your opinion of the apartment's use of dog screening was, all i can do is infer from the category that you put this article in that you find it to be some Orwellian act of oppression. I call dog shit on that kind of reasoning though. I for one am not a fan of people letting their dogs shit wherever and leaving it and am glad that some apartment complexes are saying 'not on my property.'

[R.R]

Quote:Since you didn't provide any insight into what your opinion of the apartment's use of dog screening was, all i can do is infer from the category that you put this article in that you find it to be some Orwellian act of oppression. I call dog shit on that kind of reasoning though. I for one am not a fan of people letting their dogs shit wherever and leaving it and am glad that some apartment complexes are saying 'not on my property.'

Infer what you like but some of us know stuff like this doesn't stay still and will snowball eventually expanding to the human sphere. I can see the day DNA checks are done on spat out chewing gum for example and while yes people should be more responsible for their own 'shit', don't lose sight of the bigger picture. We are not exactly living in an era where people are even remotely aware of the concept of 'Orwellian acts of oppression'. I see this as something that can evolve into a snitch culture akin to Soviet Russia or East Germany.

Besides those complexes are not actually saying 'not on my property'. They are saying this is cheaper than paying somebody else to clean it up.

Quote:"So the program is doing what we want it to do and what the property manager wants it to do - simply to encourage folks to clean up after their dogs, so they don't have to have employees and services out there doing it," he said.

Now chill out with your dog shit inferences and enjoy this song:

[solar]

Quote:An average dog leaves behind 276 pounds (125.45 kilos) of feces a year, according to the PooPrints web site. And there are about 77.5 million owned dogs in the United States.

276 pounds.

A year.

Per "average" dog.

Times 77.5 million canines ...

... equals 21.39 billion pounds of "poo".

Per year.

Merde !!

Which begs the question ...

... how much does the average human create in a year ?

[Melchor]

(07-08-2011 12:44 AM)R.R Wrote:  Infer what you like but some of us know stuff like this doesn't stay still and will snowball eventually expanding to the human sphere.

Oh well it's good to know that there are omniscient oracles like yourself out there. Nice slippery slope argument that isn't even close to relevant.

(07-08-2011 12:44 AM)R.R Wrote:  I can see the day DNA checks are done on spat out chewing gum for example and while yes people should be more responsible for their own 'shit', don't lose sight of the bigger picture.

Hate to break it to you but that day is in the past somewhere and has nothing to do with how private individuals choose to enforce their contractual agreements. You are acting like there's some sinister plot by private individuals to spread a snitch culture. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes you are just being paranoid. This is one of those instances. Furthermore, where exactly is the snitch in this scenario? The apartment manager is using their own investigative resources so the snitch culture argument is kind of a red herring.

(07-08-2011 12:44 AM)R.R Wrote:  Besides those complexes are not actually saying 'not on my property'. They are saying this is cheaper than paying somebody else to clean it up.

"So the program is doing what we want it to do and what the property manager wants it to do - simply to encourage folks to clean up after their dogs, so they don't have to have employees and services out there doing it," he said.

Wait, it's cheaper to make people internalize their own costs rather than paying for it themselves? And that's somehow a bad thing? Sorry you don't understand how contracts operate but this is no different than an employer making you take a drug test as a term of employment. Is that some sinister plot too?

(07-08-2011 12:44 AM)R.R Wrote:  Now chill out with your dog shit inferences and enjoy this song:

Enjoy the Old Dirty Bastard? Do you want to be taken seriously or not?

[R.R]

Quote:Do you want to be taken seriously or not?

So am I to infer from that statement that you are someone to be taken seriously? Especially when your main contention is that this article should be placed in another section.

Whatever, you can argue about the relevances of dog shit management as much as you want. I put the article here as it had some relevance to various other articles I'd also posted and that is the contextual framework it should be seen in, not to necessarily debate the merits regarding private property rules enforced by private people.

Oh, and in answer to your question; not by the likes of you if you can persist with such trivialities.