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City Uses DNA To Sniff Out Dog Poop Offenders
An Israeli city is using DNA analysis of dog droppings to reward pet owners who clean up after their pets and punish those who don't. A six-month trial program launched this week, in the city of Petah Tikva, to tackle the dog mess problem in a high tech way. The program asks dog owners to take their pets to a veterinarian, who then swabs its mouth and collects DNA. The city will use the DNA database it is building to match droppings to a dog and identify its owner. Owners who scoop up their dogs' droppings and place them in specially marked bins will be eligible for rewards of pet food coupons and dog toys. Those who leave the poo on the street face fines. I wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life to find yourself the official dog poop examiner of Petah Tikva, Israel.
We can identify poop with DNA but we still can't dust for vomit.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
What a shitty idea.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How about I don't take my dog to the vet for the swabbing?
I'm no criminal mastermind, but it just might work!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I can just see it now:
THIS technology is DA SHIT!
Much A Shit About Nuthin'
"It's a SHITTY job but someONE's gotta do IT"
Now that this has come up, I imagine we'll start to see at Moscone, the "First International GeoScatological Society Meeting"
These conferences will have a LOT of SHIT to talk about...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Just how many coupons do you think they honestly will give out? They'd probably just only check the DNA samples found on the ground because that generates revenue; they're honestly not going to use a costly procedure just to reward citizens. Actually, how much does DNA analysis of dog droppings cost? I'm skeptical that this will be done very often, as I believe DNA testing isn't really that cheap.
. I wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life
Actually I think whosoever is doing this accumulates 10 x the good karma normal people accumulate in one life-time.
One gets used to it - think about a coroner job....
So only outlaws will refuse to have their dogs' DNA recorded in their database?
In Israel, you need to have a license for your dog from the city/municipality where you live; you get it when you take your dog to the vet for its annual rabies vaccination. All licensed dogs must be "chipped" also.
I suppose getting caught walking an unlicensed dog will also get you a hefty fine, and your dog will be confiscated. I wouldn't think that most municipalities in Israel have a lot of budget for paying people to check on dog licensing and enforcing the "clean after your dog" laws. Maybe this is one way to try to generate a new income stream for the municipality (people already pay for licensing their dogs)?
As far as I am concerned, this is an invasion of privacy.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
during election season if it can trace bullshit back to it's source.
How about spending money on something with a better cost-benefit ratio? Like free designer flu-masks for the sick? Turning all water fountains into GOOD filtered water rather than shitty chlorine water?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
An Israeli city is doing this. But don't Americans tend to give billions to Israeli each year? So, does this mean American taxpayers are in a sense funding this?
They should do this with people who smoke and drop their cigarette butts on the ground.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
breed. I think that would go a long way towards catching whoever does it. I live in an urban area and I have no sympathy for anyone who leaves their dog shit everywhere. I think they should be fined and jailed for first offense.
Because, seriously. It's not.
Save up like a MONTH of your dog's poo. Then go around spooning it into these containers. Get fido's mouth swabbed, and watch as all the alarms at the veterinarian's office go off. Oy vey! We have a winner!
Law & Order: SPU (special poop unit)
1. city employee follows dog owner around
2. dog poops and owner throws poop away
3. city employee retrieves poop from specially marked bin and empties poop onto streets
4. fine dog owner for failing to pick up after dog
5. profit!
Looks like it's another city to add to Triumph's blacklist.
Now I can just imagine irate neighbors taking poop and planting them to get their neighbors in trouble.
Also...wonder how this will affect that dog-poop in the mail business.
Wait...the DNA sampling is "voluntary" right? It's not required to register your dog's DNA?
btw, the mainstream news had a segment on it.
Living not far from, and working in Petah-Tikva - I have to say that the City Hall should have focused on better ways of earning a buck - like fining businesses for pollution (plenty of major pollutants in Petah-Tikva), fining diners whose trash fills their the air of some street-corners with horrible disgusting smells (making for "pleasant" summer-day walks from parkling lot to work).
Plus how can you prove your dog's innocence - did he do his thing in a middle of a god-forgotten sand-lot (which Petah-Tikva has plenty of), or in the middle of the Mall parking lot ?
Eat a bunch of PF Changs and sneak out there at midnight and take a huge steamin' dump in the park. Let them figure that one out!
As I said, you've got to be kidding me. Isn't DNA analysis still kind of expensive?
You wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life to find yourself the official dog poop examiner of Petah Tikva, Israel. And I wonder what sin the official dog poop examiner had to commit in his previous life.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
fascists
I wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life to find yourself the official dog poop examiner of Petah Tikva, Israel.
Why, isn't it obvious? You'd have to be the sort of person who keeps posting these idle articles to the front page.
This technology is the shit!
That ending line would have been funny if Judaism believed in reincarnation...
What a waste of resources....
I thought jews were tight fisted with money, and didn't waste it on shit like this?
1) vet's can keep DNA records of pets; and
2) cities find it economical to enforce poop-scoop laws by DNA testing dog shit.
Sheesh.
Petah Tikva doesn't really exist.
"Programming is life, the rest is mere details"
Second installment to the popular Holy Land Times bestseller! ... ...wait
#201.
Step 1 - Pretend you love your neighbour (but still don't get caught)
Step 2 - Play with his/her dog.
Step 3 - Get the dog's saliva on your sterile, latex glove wearing hands
Step 4 - Go home and extract DNA
Step 5 - Clone your neighbour's dog
Step 6 - Collect the cloned dog's wastes
Step 7 - Drop them in as many of those bins as you can
Step 8 - Profit!
BTW, why is this not posted under the "Yo-Dawg Rights Online" category?
idleispoop
/me runs back to the real /.
This is absurd! What the hell does this kind of DNA testing cost anyway? If it's in the article I'll never know because I'm NOT reading an article about DNA sampling of shit for the purpose of issuing fines. Moronic idea. This government must have a lot of money to blow (or be willing to force it's citizens to pay up big for stupidity)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Gifts for cleaning up Dog poop??? I guess the authorities need to train the dogs on where to drop and where not instead of their owners. After all the it's dog poop and not dog-owners' poop
You are sooooo A-pro-poooo.... I'll deliver a kit of Kennel-Ration and Gravy Train and the whole Kit and KaPoodle to yah.. woof woof...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Yeah, it's not, but most of the posts were! RTFP (always wanted to have an opportunity to use that acronym)...
Oh, wait, is that you? You better start cleaning up all those turds on Ben-Gurion St.!
Granted, not many dogs in it, so if that's for real, the scheme is not as lucrative as collecting parking tickets.
"I wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life to find yourself the official dog poop examiner of Petah Tikva, Israel. "
Probably you must have left too much dog poop around...
S. Lupi is common in the "Gush Dan" region of Israel, which includes Petah Tikva. If people cleaned up after their dogs, it would be much less common.
I am betting 100$ palestinians are taking care of the testing.
Make Profit easily!
Step 1:
Collect all of your dogs dropping from the backyard
Step 2:
Distribute across city poop collection bins...
Step 3:
Earn rewards! Score!
Steal poo from the poo bins. Then go around spooning poo into inappropriate places. A bunch of obedient citizens get fined unfairly and go apeshit. Stand back and watch as the whole system falls apart.
Are we sure that this story is true? Because this exact story was an April Fools joke in my hometown about 10 years ago.
I wonder if the fellow who thought of this is a Touch Tone Terrorist fan? (Junkyard Willie) "I wanna know who left the log in the toilet bowl!" ... "I got a sample--I put it in my refrigerizer. I'll take it down to the hospital and they can do a D.O.A. test. They can find out who it was."
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
The security industry of Israel is renowned the world over. As soon as they have proved the concept on dog poop, they'll have a market to sell it to other countries, for dogs, and probably long pig as well.
Some of me thinks that this is just a trial of a technique to raise the public acceptance of ubiquitous DNA testing. Some of me thinks it may be an exercise in raising the public FEAR of ubiquitous DNA testing. You'd only have to try a dozen cases or so and soon everyone will be a-scoopin' that poop.
Yet another brick in the wall.
I wonder what might happen if dog owners put their own poop as well into this box.
You forgot the bit about how you'd be here all night...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Nom nom nom... I haz a hotdog!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Assuming that the final 'h' is not pronounced (as in Sarah) Petah Tikva sounds the same as the Bulgarian for "fifth pumpkin" :-)
There was a movie where this dude from the 1700's traveled through time and came to present-day New York. While walking a dog that took a dump, a police officer asked him to clean it up. He said, "Do you mean to tell me there is a law compelling gentlemen to remove canine feces?" And for the life of me, I can't remember the name of that movie.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
And I can assure you that dog poop is quite a problem here. There is a lot of small children on the outside and dog poop is more immediate danger to them than occasional suicidal bomber.
They should do this with people who smoke and drop their cigarette butts on the ground.
Yes, lets use small scale littering as an excuse for a comprehensive genetic database.
Then they can harvest your dna in a local hardware store, a mine where you visited your cousin or friend, and a bank you frequent, which happened to be bombed by terroists (but not you).. and "put together the pieces" with a little scaremongering before a jury of "peers" who finance fine entertainment like survivor.
On an equally orwellian though not immediately threatening note, they could easily swab areas unobtrusively and run the combination of samples through that new process they've discovered to individualize the data from mixed samples, then cross-reference it with the database to data-mine mass surveillance on the general populace.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
i'd just feed my dog on other dogs. maybe that should screw it up nicely
That godforsaken excuse for suburbia that actually got 500,000 people signed up in a facebook group called "movement to cancel the city of petach tikva". i always thought it was only 'arsim, zkenot ve bnei akiva'
I live in Modi'in (in Israel), city of the future. Apparently in the future most people refuse to pick up the poop of their horse sized dogs. This isn't a problem only in my city, this is nation wide. It's a weird cultural thing.
In any case, we are electing a new mayor, and at a public debate we heard from all of the candidates. It was running neck and neck until one stood up and said he'd sick the gestapo on anyone who doesn't pick up after their pets. Judging by the reaction he got, dude is gonna win by a landslide!
This method would let any city clean up it's streets without hiring more cops, which sounds great to me.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
It doesn't take a genious to figure out that this law is proposed because of irresponsible dog owners. I'm sick and tired of slaloming around dog shit every time I walk down the streets, I would love to see this law right here in Barcelona as well. What goes for license? fuck yeah. That's definetly the best solution. Next step is license to have children. Society shouldn't have to pick up (litteraly) the shit that irresponsible dog owners (parents as well, heck anyone responsible for another living creature) leave behind. I don't leave shit in your line of path, stop leaving shit in mine.
I am the lawn!
While this isn't the first time I've comtenplated taking a deuce in my neighbors yard, it is the first time I've considered going to Israel to do it.
I wonder what sin you had to commit in a previous life to find yourself the official dog poop examiner of Petah Tikva, Israel.
Islamic suicide bomber.
that AFAICT jewish people do not believe in reencarnation, no no "past lives" either.... :-P
Right? Please tell me it is...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
this is the most serious problem in israel today? what a waste of resources
They're using their grammar skills there.
Maybe its a complete fabrication. But I was told about a month ago in France they have something called the Moto Crotte. People are actually paid to drive around in a vehicle that has some kind of suction hose or something to essentially clean up dog crap. Creating jobs is good right?
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
because sequencing the DNA of a pile of hot dogshit is still more important than addressing the palistinian occupation.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think rather than the take-a-bite-out-of-crime dept.
This one should have come from the i'll-get-you-my-pretty-and-your're-little-dog-too dept
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I'm sorry, but doesn't Israel have bigger problems to worry about, like terrorist nations who want to exterminate the Jews and push them into the ocean? Aren't Arab states constantly lobbing missiles and sending suicide bombers over the border? In light of the constant threat of war, it seems silly to me that they're cracking down so hard on dog poop. Yes, dog doo in the street is annoying, but it's not something I'd ever want tax dollars spent on were I an Israeli citizen.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
1. the grizzly responder said it used to be 5$ per check, with price going down.
2. make sure that your fine plus collection cost is higher than 5$
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
As a US taxpayer, I'd say my money has been well spent. ;)
Israel...previous life...
Clearly what's happened is that the Middle East has disappeared and Israel is now adjacent to the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia. So dog poop has become their biggest problem. Well, that and China's interest in their nuclear stockpile.
Why is an article about Israeli dog waste illustrated with a Welsh dog-waste container?
WAIT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DISPOSE OF POOP? I usually just eat it. I think I just solved my pooping problem.
fortheloveofgodandallthatisholymyanusisbleeding
Petah Tikva.. hahahah that is the town the Egyptian band was trying to get in "The Band's Visit". [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032856/]
"In other news, vets will also be asking pet owners to provide a cheek swab..."
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Steal poo from the poo bins. Then go around spooning poo into inappropriate places. A bunch of obedient citizens get fined unfairly and go apeshit. Stand back and watch as the whole system falls apart.
You mean, watch the shit fly?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Unless there's blood in the stool, you can't get DNA from poop. All the bacteria destroys any viable cells from which DNA can be extracted. Instead of a mouth swab, they'd have to do an ass swab and track all the strains of e-coli that were living in your dog.
thanks1!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Don't think it's nice for owners to let their dogs crap just anywhere they feel like crapping, but on the other hand, to force owners to pick up the dog crap regardless of where the dog has left it ( middle of a bush, heart of the forest etc. ) seems like the Nazi anti dog league just got elected.
I read once that the main justification for these measures was that dog crap carried dangerous diseases which children might get if we were not protected by the Nazi dog police, but I have never seen any statistics to show that there has been a drop in the infection rate to reflect the draconian laws.
My own theory is that people who do not own dogs, just wanted to humiliate those who do. Now we just need to shoot all those foxes, cats, badgers... which infest our beautiful countryside ( and our towns: I live in London ) to make us all sleep more soundly in our beds.
In Soviet Russia, Dog Poop Sniffs YOU!
Pay instead to have people walk the sidewalks and spray down dog poop so that the ground can absorb the nutrients. Dog poop gone, free fertilizer, problem solved. If the US took better care of its sidewalks, more people would enjoy walking, which is precisely what the country needs in particular, both to get off oil, and to get our fat citizens walking again. It's totally ridiculous that we're bagging fertilizer in plastic and then burying it in land fills.
Wouldn't it be easier to match the Dog's DNA?
... At least in human poop, you can't retrieve any DNA. Or, to be precise, there is at least one Swedish policeman who has recently claimed that you cannot get any DNA from human poop.
What kind of quest is this?! and for what game? Seems the only way to win is NOT TO PLAY :D
Israelis don't believe in reincarnation.
They're only able to track dog poop, right? I mean, no particular reason I'm asking... Just curious...
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
This reminds me of an April Fool that ran in the local paper of our little hick town in southern Scotland a number of years ago..
The front-page article explained how the council was going to run DNA tests on dog turds and fine the owners.. alas, quite a few of the readers failed to spot the date or consider the fact that there is no DNA database for dogs in the UK..
The newspaper ended up having to print an apology after a number of concerned citizens scooped up and handed in illicit turds to the Town Hall..
I REALLY wish they did this here in the USA.
I have a 3 yr old son and live opposite a kids play park.
The park has been totally ruined by f***ing retards who walk their dogs there and dont bother to pick up their sh1t when they think no-one is watching.
It makes me mad thinking about those dog owners who just don't care about passing some potentially really nasty diseases onto kids.
You need tubgirl, second board on the right .. don't let the port hit you in the butt ..
the horror already ... only THINKING of about this mental image with your disposal problem and the doorknob ..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
It's very hot, humid, and sunny, so leaving dog poop lying around makes it stink a hundred times more!!!
We have the same problem with outdoor cats, too.