“Some of these cages were literally the tiniest-we would call them rabbit hutches. The results, published Thursday in the journal Animal Welfare, paint a grim picture.įrom the size and sanitation of the cages to the ability of their occupants to act like normal civets, every plantation the researchers visited failed basic animal welfare requirements. Researchers from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and the London-based nonprofit World Animal Protection assessed the living conditions of nearly 50 wild civets held in cages at 16 plantations on Bali. In part, this is for coffee production, but it’s also so money can be made from civet-ogling tourists. Their digestive enzymes change the structure of proteins in the coffee beans, which removes some of the acidity to make a smoother cup of coffee.īut as civet coffee has gained popularity, and with Indonesia growing as a tourist destination where visitors want to see and interact with wildlife, more wild civets are being confined to cages on coffee plantations.

In Indonesia, the Asian palm civet, which raids commercial fruit farms, is often seen as a pest, so the growth in the kopi luwak industry encouraged local people to protect civets for their valuable dung. It plays an important role in the food chain, eating insects and small reptiles in addition to fruits like coffee cherries and mangoes, and being eaten in turn by leopards, large snakes, and crocodiles.Īt first the civet coffee trade boded well for these creatures. A cup of kopi luwak, as it’s known, can sell for as much as $80 in the United States.įound in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the civet has a long tail like a monkey, face markings like a raccoon, and stripes or spots on its body. Or rather, it’s made from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by the civet, a catlike creature.

It’s the world’s most expensive coffee, and it’s made from poop.

Coffee sumatra