The cruel kopi luwak industry in Indonesia has been exposed again by PETA Asia’s latest investigation. Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), also known as common palm civet, toddy cat and musang. These animals are kept captive in farms in horrible conditions and are forced to eat coffee beans — as had been already exposed in a previous investigation. The beans ferment as they pass through a civet’s intestines, and after being defecated with other faecal matter, they are collected and sold to extravagant coffee drinkers happy to pay a lot of money for the luxury.
New footage from one of these farms has revealed the toll that constant confinement to a cramped wire cage has taken on a sensitive Asian palm civet cat. The stressed, terrified animal paces and goes in circles, desperate to escape his filthy prison cell. Investigators found civet cats in cages encrusted with faeces and rotting coffee cherries, and despite these civets being nocturnal animals, they did not have any dark place to sleep. One farmer explained to investigators that civet cats are kept caged for a maximum of three years before releasing them back into the wild, but they may not survive because of the stress of confinement and lack of adequate nutrition.
Japan is one of the biggest markets for kopi luwak, and producers deliberately mislabel the beans from captive civet cats as “wild-sourced” to keep some of the customers put off by previous exposés. The coffee retailer Bacha Coffee still sells this product despite they have been informed about how it is produced. Therefore, PETA has created a petition to Tell Bacha Coffee to Cut the Crap and Drop Civet Cat Coffee.
