by JH Pitas
“I’ve spent my entire morning researching dog poop DNA and I’m pissed lol”1
Today nearly 40% of households in the United States own a dog – 1.6 dogs per household to be exact – which translates to roughly 77 million dogs in total. Since each dog produces about 250 pounds of poop each year, that means there is a staggering 21 billion pounds (or 10.5 million tons if you prefer) of dog poop produced annually in the United States alone.2 That’s a lot of dog poop. And something has to be done with it. The pet industry overall has grown substantially in the last several decades to include all sorts of auxiliary goods and services, including dog poop collection services, and an diverse array of products to make the acts of picking up, storing, and transporting all that poop less unpleasant. But one of the newest and most creative uses of dog poop is to police private property.
“I received an e mail from my apartment complex stating … they found a ‘sample next to a dog waste station that tested positive’ for my dog and they are slapping a $250 fine on me.”3
Four days prior to getting this email and at the behest of their property management company, the anonymous Reddit user quoted twice now above submitted a DNA sample from their dog (collected via a cheek swab) to the company PooPrints. Technicians at PooPrints were able to match DNA from the cheek swab to DNA found in an illicit pile of poop sampled by property managers a few weeks prior. The property management company then used this test result as justification to fine the dog owner for violating property regulations which require people to pick up after their dogs. Overall sentiment from other Reddit users in this post was mixed – some sympathized with the dog owner who claimed that the sample match must have been erroneous. Others dismissed these claims and argued the dog owner got what they deserved for being irresponsible – after all, DNA doesn’t lie. Only one user pointed out the broader context of using dog DNA to police private property: “Damn move your ass outta there. That’s some straight up 1984 dictator style oppression right there.”
When I first learned about PooPrints, I also spent a fair chunk of my morning researching dog poop DNA. As an animal geographer and also a geographer of waste and infrastructure I find PooPrints a fascinating intersection of concerns. And PooPrints is also intriguing to meas a person who often thinks about the ways surveillance technology is subtly (and not so subtly) infiltrating our everyday lives. One thing that immediately stands out to me is the way PooPrints leverages non-humans and their bodily traces in infrastructural networks which harness DNA technology to police private properties, something which prior to this might have been only seen in conservation or zoological spaces. This seems like an expansion of surveillance with potentially dangerous future implications. PooPrints also encapsulates one of the most enduring lessons that I’ve learned from researching waste disposal for my dissertation: capitalism is constantly searching for ways to extract value from waste, and enroll it into systems of value production. And furthermore, the techno-infrastructural networks which work to manage and extract value from waste often dovetail with the establishment and enforcement of social norms and expectations – in this case that one picks up after their dog. Consequently, I’ve now spent far more than just a morning thinking about dog poop, DNA, and what this all means.
But what about the 77 million dogs producing 21 billion pounds of poop each year? Nobody likes having to live with dog waste, and it can a serious environmental hazard, especially in high concentrations. Is PooPrints – with it’s normative and disciplinary effects – actually positioned to help address the growing problem of dog poop in the United States? PooPrints certainly thinks so:
It is estimated only 60% of dog owners pick up dog poop consistently. This, in turn, leaves a lot of unscooped poop.
Unscooped dog poop can leach into the [local] watershed and decay, releasing compounds that can kill fish, and any animal in the vicinity that relies on that water. The nutrients in the waste can even cause excessive algae growth that will upset the natural balance of water ecosystems.
Many solutions have been proposed to combat the dog waste issue but only one has been proven to be a successful enforcement method: Doggie DNA.4
This quote from a PooPrints blog post about The Dangers of Dog Poop makes it seem like PooPrints is doing a public service, and positions property managers who want to eliminate improperly disposed of poop as good stewards of the environment. But why is this method so effective? Before PooPrints, an apartment complex would usually have to catch an irresponsible pet owner in the act – after all dog poops are not exactly snowflakes, unique in each and every way. At least to the naked eye! In reality, each dog poop contains large amounts of unique DNA material. And thanks to the wonders of modern science, DNA taken from dog poop can be matched to DNA profiles of individual dogs themselves. Now dogs and poops can be definitively matched, and their naughty non-scooping humans punished for their dirty deeds.
All of this is probably starting to sound like weird parody of crime-scene investigation shows like CSI, and honestly that’s not too far off base. PooPrints describes their process in 5 easy to understand steps. First, a dog’s DNA is sampled using a cheek-swab. Second, the DNA from the swab is entered into the DNA World Pet Registry (a rather grandly named database maintained by PooPrints). Third, employees of property management companies collect samples of improperly disposed of poop using a specialized collection kit. Fourth, the test kits are returned to BioPet Laboratories for PooPrint sample processing. Fifth, a “unique genetic profile is generated and matched to the offending canine.”5 PooPrints partitions their database by property, and checks each sample of improperly disposed of poop against the dog DNA registered to that property. And PooPrints maintains records of DNA from all the improperly disposed of poops found on a property over time, so that when a new dog is added to the database their DNA is checked against this database of past poops and their owners can be retro-actively fined. This is exactly what happened to the Reddit user quoted at the start of this post, who received a fine for poop that was found several weeks before their dog was registered in PooPrints’ DNA World Pet Registry.
Geographer of technology and infrastructure Kathryn Furlong writes how small technologies (like dog poop DNA testing) can have big impacts on infrastructural networks. These mediating technologies can transform already existing infrastructural networks, making them more equipped to deal with big problems.6 Just like there are mediating technologies, there are also mediating objects, which embody technology and transform the performance of networks. These objects can be pieces of physical infrastructure of all types, especially if we define infrastructure contextually to mean anything which facilitates the smooth running of things as it pertains to systems like waste disposal.7 The history of waste disposal infrastructure is full of mediating objects big and small – mechanized trash trucks, plastic household trash cans, flush toilets, drains, etc – which have enabled and sustained our systems of waste management for decades. And these infrastructural networks are coupled with social technologies which leverage things like fines to enforce participation. This is part of the reason capitalism has endured and intensified despite producing staggering amounts of waste. PooPrints serves as a mediating technology for property managers seeking to make their already existing infrastructure like designated dog walking zones, collection bag dispensers, and specialized waste bins more effective by providing a strong incentive for residents to comply with requirements that they use them. But does this do anything to address the broader environmental risks of dog poop, like PooPrints claims on their website? And can DNA testing dog poop actually help keep us from drowning in the 77 million tons of dog shit produced each year in the United States? Or is this rhetoric just greenwashing a disciplinary program meant to protect private property? And is this an example, as some scholars of surveillance have argued, of a disproportionately invasive response to a trivial problem?8 And, if dog poop DNA testing is a mediating object in networks of waste management infrastructure, can it also have a similarly transformational effect on networks of surveillance?
I don’t know if there is any available data on whether or not PooPrints is having an effect on things like water quality in urban areas. This might substantiate or disprove some of the claims made in the PooPrints blog post. But there has certainly been a social effect of apartments and other property management groups making use of PooPrints over the last few years. I learned about PooPrints from a different Reddit post, where a user was asking if it was legal for their apartment complex to require they give PooPrints a DNA sample from their dog. They posted a screenshot of a text message from their property manager asking them to submit a cheek-swab to PooPrints or risk having their lease agreement terminated. But there was little discussion of legality, nor were there specifics from the lease agreement posted. However a few years earlier someone did post the same question along with a portion of their lease agreement to a subreddit specifically geared towards legal advice.9 The consensus seemed to be that it was as enforceable as any other portion of a pet agreement (such as one requiring registration of pets in general). It would seem then that regardless of the veracity of environmental claims and such, a service like PooPrints will persist and grow so long as it provides a viable way for capital to police private property, and to generate value through fines.
I’m afraid this is really all I have to say about PooPrints for right now, but that’s not to say there aren’t all sorts of questions I still have and still want to answer. To date there are only a few scholarly articles that engage with PooPrints, and none from an animal geographic perspective, so there’s a lot more left to say about dog poop, DNA, and surveillance. And I didn’t even touch on other tough subjects like social justice, issues with disability and support animals, and so on. PooPrints, like so many facets of capitalism today, is both gripping and horrifying at the same time, and writing this blog has been a good way for me to think through it. It’s gripping because of the way it enrolls poop into networks of infrastructure. And it’s horrifying because it reduces DNA analysis and surveillance to an incredibly banal level in ways that will surely have future implications. I don’t really have any substantive suggestions on how to combat this kind of creeping horror. But one Reddit user did have an idea, left in response to the most recent post about PooPrints (and the post which introduced me to the service): if capitalism is going to start using our pets DNA as a tool for social control, than it may be “time [for us humans] to start shitting in the yard” too.10 That’s certainly one way to do it.
Endnotes:
1:https://www.reddit.com/r/dogs/comments/bj4uiy/vent_help_pooprints_apartment_slapping_a_250_fine/
2:https://www.statista.com/topics/1258/pets/
3:https://www.reddit.com/r/dogs/comments/bj4uiy/vent_help_pooprints_apartment_slapping_a_250_fine/
4:https://www.pooprints.com/the-dangers-of-dog-poop/
5:https://www.pooprints.com/how-it-works/
6:Furlong, K. (2011). Small technologies, big change: Rethinking infrastructure through STS and geography. Progress in Human Geography, 35(4), 460-482.
7:Moore, S. A. (2012). Garbage matters: Concepts in new geographies of waste. Progress in Human Geography, 36(6), 780-799.
8:Forensic science and environmental offences: Litter, DNA analysis and surveillance, by Tersia Oosthuizen, Loene M. Howes, Rob White
9:https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/6l0op9/am_i_legally_obligated_to_provide_my_apartment/