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Scientists are hoping that a new DNA database for dogs will help track - and prosecute - people who breed dogs to fight. But advocates say there's a risk that the DNA records could be used against the dogs, or against people who adopt them.

The idea is to have a canine version of the FBI's CODIS - a database of human DNA that is used to connect criminals to crime scenes. But in this case, the DNA might help prove that breeders supplied dogs to a dogfighting ring.

In July 2009, a dogfighting operation was raided in northwest Missouri. Tim Rickey, the senior director of field operations for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, recalls the scene from that morning.

"I very vividly remember getting out of the truck, and one of the first images I seen was a dog that had one of its legs chewed off in a fight," Rickey says. "And then the owners just amputated the leg."

More than 500 dogs were seized from sites across seven states that day, and...