Dog owners in the southern French town of Béziers are to be required to carry their pet’s “genetic passport” in a trial scheme to reduce dog excrement on the streets.
Local mayor Robert Ménard, a former journalist and co-founder of Reporters Sans Frontières, says inhabitants and visitors are fed up with faeces on the town’s pavements. He plans to introduce a two-year experiment to trace and fine those who fail to clear up after their pets.
“We have to punish to make people behave better,” Ménard, elected on a far-right ticket in 2014 and reelected in 2020, told France Bleu radio.
Under the planned scheme, dog owners will be required to take their pets to a vet or ask one of the town’s veterinary specialists for a free saliva sample, which will be genetically tested and a document issued. Those subsequently stopped without their dog’s genetic passport will be fined €38 (£32.60).
Dog excrement found on the pavement will be collected and tested and the details sent to police who will consult the national pet registers and match it to a specific owner who will face a bill for street cleaning up to €122, Ménard said.
Ménard first proposed collecting DNA from the estimated 1,500 dogs in the centre of Béziers in 2016 but his request was rejected by the local administrative court as an attack on personal freedom. The scheme was then estimated to cost €50,000 a year.
He said the new genetic passport measure was submitted to the local prefecture earlier this year and no objections to its implementation were raised this time.
Ménard told French radio: “I can’t take any more of this [dog] mess. The state has said nothing against this scheme this time and thinks the same thing. This has to be done and not just in Béziers … We need to penalise people so that they behave 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.”
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He said the experiment would run until July 2025.
Ménard added: “There will be a certain lenience for those who are not from Béziers. If they pick up their dog dirt we won’t bother them. We’re not xenophobes. Foreigners aren’t the problem, it’s the locals who are not cleaning up.”
In 2015 it was reported in the UK that Flintshire county council in north Wales was considering using a DNA database to clamp down on dog mess, while the Isle of Wight and Hyndburn in Lancashire have also discussed using genetic testing.
