In Tres Cantos, a municipality in the Madrid area, they no longer rely solely on civic sense or the luck of a police check: the era of canine DNA has officially begun to hunt down uncivilized owners.
The Tres Cantos model: genetics versus fines
The Spanish town, as reported by our colleagues at Madrid Secreto, has decided to put words into action with a strategy renamed “canine CSI.” Every owner is required to register their pet’s genetic profile through a simple saliva sample. When a municipal technician and a police officer find uncollected excrement, the sample is analyzed in a laboratory and compared with the municipal database.
The result? Certain identification leading to heavy penalties: starting at €300 for the first offense, up to €600 for repeat offenses. In addition to picking up after their pets, Spanish citizens are now required to carry a bottle of water to dilute urine, under penalty of further fines.
The case of Rome: one in four streets is dirty
According to data provided by ACOS (Agency for the Control of Quality in Public Services) in a study published in 2023, one in four streets shows signs of neglect.
The study, which monitored around 9,000 streets between 2018 and 2022, highlighted a critical situation, particularly in Municipalities II, III, XI, and XII, while areas such as the Historic Center (Municipality I) are slightly better, with the same positive note for Municipality IX. The negative peak dates back to 2021, when dirt had reached 45% of the streets.
Regulations and penalties in Rome
There is no shortage of regulations in Rome, and failure to pick up after your dog can result in a maximum fine of €500. However, without constant monitoring and objective identification tools such as a DNA database, the possibility of penalizing those who do not pick up after their dogs remains linked to the flagrancy of the offense.
The Tres Cantos experiment, which joins 80 other Spanish municipalities that have adopted genetic registration, raises an inevitable question: is it time to move away from appeals to civic duty alone and move towards scientific monitoring of the territory?