Silly doggy

The Edinburgh Evening News reports on a novel way of dealing with dirty dogs:

"DNA tests would be used to catch out dog owners who let their pets repeatedly foul parks and streets under plans being drawn up by the city council.
Environmental wardens would take swabs from dog mess and use them to identify offending animals, then hit their owners with £40 fines.
The scheme would work by the council building up a database of previous offenders, in the same way as the police DNA database. Once someone has been fined, the council would keep a DNA profile taken from the dog's mess.
Then wardens could test samples taken from dirt left in problem areas to see if the same dogs are responsible.
Fines could then be sent out to the owner in the post."

Slight problem here. How much would it cost to have a dog mess swab analysed for DNA and then compared to the dog DNA database? Add in the cost of maintaining the database in the first place. Then link dog DNA to dog owner. Then review past history of DNA deposits. Cross- refer to fine database. It's all going to cost a bit more than £40 per case. Ok, clearing up dog mess should not necessarily be financially neutral but even so...

A high tech solution in search of a problem.