Animal rights organisation, the People for the Ethical of Animals, have warned that one of the world’s most expensive coffees, kopi luwak, was produced in an environment where civet cats were abused and kept in battery cages.
ANIMAL rights organisation, the People for the Ethical of Animals (Peta), have warned that one of the world’s most expensive coffees, kopi luwak, was produced in an environment where civet cats were abused and kept in battery cages.
Peta says the animals are also fed an unhealthy diet to produce one of the world’s most expensive coffees.
Kopi luwak is one of the world’s most expensive coffee, produced mainly on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi, and in East Timor.
It is a coffee consisting of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. It is also called civet coffee.
The unique delicious taste of this coffee is because of the enzymes secreted by the civet during digestion.
Peta has warned that the civet cats were being abused in the process of producing the coffee. Amongst others they were kept in battery cages and they were fed an unhealthy diet.
According to Abigail Forsyth, Peta campaign co-ordinator in Asia, their investigation documented cruelty on every kopi luwak farm they visited.
“Nocturnal civet cats, who naturally fear humans, were confined to small wire cages with a dark place to sleep and were subjected to a constant barrage of unwanted human contact.
“The cages in which the civet cats were kept were filthy and encrusted with faeces, rotting berries, and dirt, and the animals panted incessantly in the heat,” she said.
Forsyth said the numerous civet cats exhibited signs of extreme psychological distress, including pacing and biting themselves.
“Investigators saw several civet cats with raw, bloody wounds, but the animals didn’t appear to receive any veterinary care. At least one was seemingly blind.
“The civet cats were fed an unhealthy and unnatural diet consisting of an excessive amount of coffee berries in order to maximise farms’ profits. Many were losing their fur because of malnourishment.”
Despite some brands of kopi luwak claiming to be 100 percent wild and ethically sourced, Forsyth said their investigators were told that it would be nearly impossible to collect enough wild civet cat excrement to produce the coffee.
“One producer admitted that they sometimes collect a small amount of beans excreted by free-roaming civet cats, mix it with the beans from caged animals, and then misleadingly call the coffee ‘wild-sourced’.”
Another told an investigator who was posing as a buyer that he could just label the coffee produced by caged civet cats as “wild”.
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