![]() ![]() “We witnessed people taking photos (including selfies) of the animals in their cages,” he added.Īll of the caged civets had most likely been caught from the wild, and then caged in the plantations to mass produce coffee on-site, the team found. Neil D’Cruze, researcher, Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Researchĭespite the visibly poor conditions of the civets and their enclosures, “majority of tourists seemed oblivious to the cruelty involved in the civet coffee plantations that they visited,” D’Cruze said. “ĭespite the elaborate and clever marketing (for example, that civets choose the ripest coffee cherries and that their unique gut biota serves to alter the chemical structure so that it has a superior taste) most genuine coffee aficionados agree that in reality Civet Coffee is a gimmick and that it does not actually have a superior taste. But even solitary animals interact with other individuals in the wild, the authors write, and these interactions are essential and instinctive for reproductive purposes. Moreover, many civets had no access to clean water, and had little contact with other civets. But most caged civets in Bali’s coffee farms were being fed unnatural diets, comprising mainly of coffee cherries, the team found. In the wild, palm civets feed on an omnivorous diet, the authors write, consuming plants, fruits, nuts and insects. ![]() “The wire mesh flooring in some situations can be extremely painful - they can cause sores and abrasions over time when there are no other platforms or refuge provided.” Some of these conditions were alarming, D’Cruze told Mongabay. ![]() The cages were also filthy, lined by old and new feces and urine. The cages typically had wire flooring, were barren with no form of natural substrate or vegetation that civets are used to in the wild, and had little access to natural light. In most plantations, civets were housed in small cages that greatly restricted the animals’ movements, the team observed. On assessing the housing conditions of 48 caged civets in 16 civet coffee plantations close to Bali in Indonesia, researcher Neil D’Cruze from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, and his colleagues from the non-profit World Animal Protection in London, found that all the plantations had very poor civet housing conditions. But the rising popularity of kopi luwak has meant that civets are increasingly being removed from the wild and held in captivity to mass-produce the gourmet coffee.Ĭonsequently, numerous small kopi luwak plantations with captive civets have cropped up in Indonesia and southeast Asia in the last few years to attract tourists.Ĭaged civets on these plantations, however, tend to live in very poor conditions that fail to meet basic animal welfare requirements, a new study published in the journal Animal Welfare has found. Traditionally, people made this coffee using coffee beans collected from civet droppings in the wild. ![]() A cup of this luxury coffee can cost between $30 and $100 in the U.S. The civet’s digestive juices ferment the coffee beans, some experts claim, adding a nutty - and a highly prized - flavour to them. If you’re a coffee connoisseur, you’ve probably heard of kopi luwak - the world’s most expensive coffee, made from partially digested coffee beans, excreted by a shy, forest-dwelling, cat-like animal called the common palm civet ( Paradoxurus hermaphroditus).Ĭivet coffee is thought to have a unique taste. ![]()
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