KEY POINTS
- A town in France will require dog owners to carry their pet's "passport" when walking in certain parts of the city.
- It is part of the mayor's plan to crack down on dog poo.
- If abandoned excrement is found, council workers will be authorised to trace it back to the dog responsible.
Dog owners will be fined $63 if they are caught without their four-legged friends "genetic passport" amid a French mayor's war on excrement.
Robert Ménard — the mayor of Béziers, a small town of about 78,000 people in the south of France — is so sick of seeing dog poo in the town centre that he has announced a crackdown and has vowed to hold owners to account.
The trial starts this month and will run until July 2025.
Robert Ménard — the mayor of Béziers, a town in the south of France — is cracking down on dog poo. Source: AAP, EPA / Ludovic Marin
They will receive a "genetic passport" once their pooch's DNA has been logged, which they must carry when out on a dog walk through certain parts of the town centre.
If caught without it after the two-month grace period, they will be fined €38 ($63).
Council workers will be authorised to test any abandoned poo and trace it back to the dog responsible. If found, the owner will face a cleaning bill of €122 ($202).
However, the town is yet to contract a testing lab, and it is unknown how accurate the test results will be, The Washington Post reported.
There are numerous problems with leaving dog poo in the streets, wrote Melissa Starling, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, for .
The faeces can harbour antibiotic-resistant bacteria, contain microorganisms that can cause illness in humans, and can contribute to water pollution, Starling wrote.
It's not the first time Ménard — who was first elected in 2014 with the backing of France's far-right National Rally political party, and re-elected in 2020 — has proposed the idea.
The town council approved the plan in 2016 but it was struck down by a court after a legal challenge was launched against it, France's Bleu Hérault radio station reported that year.
But this time around, no one contested Ménard's tweaked version of the law within the designated two-month period after he refiled it in May, and it has now come into effect, The Washington Post reported.
Ménard was quoted in The Guardian as telling French radio recently that people needed to be penalised "so that they behaved properly".
“We did a count and we pick up more than 1,000 messes a month, sometimes a lot more, just in the town centre. It just cannot go on," he said, according to The Guardian.
Dog owners in Béziers will be required to carry their pooch's "genetic passport" when out on a dog walk through certain parts of the city centre. Credit: Unsplash/Finn Zenzen
How's the abandoned dog poo situation in Australia?
The issue of abandoned dog poo has also been a problem for local councils in Australia.
Residents of the City of Casey, in Melbourne's south-east, they could face a $200 fine if they were caught walking their dog without a poo bag, and a $500 fine if they failed to bin faeces.
More recently, the town of Cottesloe in Western Australia warned in June that dog owners who didn't pick up after their pet could be fined $1,000.
There's no better way to dispose of dog poo than simply bagging it and dropping it in a rubbish bin, wrote Starling in her article for The Conversation.
"For all the dog owners out there that do pick up after their dogs, your community thanks you."
