Being sold at around 90 US dollars a cup in the coffee-shops
of the world’s major metropolitan areas, would you ever consider boycotting
coffee luwak if you find out that it was unethically produced?
By: Ringo Bones
Once considered a freebie by coffee plantation workers in
the Malay Peninsula since the 18th Century, that is before the
world’s coffee connoisseurs discovered the distinctive mild tea-like taste of
coffee luwak. To the uninitiated and however you spell it, coffee luwak / kopi luwak or "civet coffee" is made – or more accurately
brewed from - coffee berries that had been eaten by the native wild civet cats
that roam the region’s coffee plantations then passed though their digestive
system. Despite “sanitation concerns” of brewing coffee form beans that had
been literally picked from the droppings of wild civet cats were swiftly set
aside once coffee aficionados around the world fell in love with the
distinctive mild tea-like taste of coffee luwak - mainly due to the civet cat's proteolytic enzymes in its digestive system that seeps into the swallowed coffee beans resulting in shorter peptides and more free amino acids - which now often sells for
around 90 US dollars a cup in posh coffee shops of the world’s major
metropolitan areas. But how ethically produced are coffee lowak currently being
marketed around the world today?
Purists insists that for this product to pass muster as
genuine coffee luwak – the plantation grown coffee beans must and should be eaten by free (free range?)
civet cats. But due to the ongoing deforestation of Malaysia’s tropical forests
and those in the surrounding Malay Peninsula region, free / wild civet cats are
fast becoming a rarity so what does an enterprising coffee lowak producer
resorts to just to keep his or her bottom line fat – battery farming of civet
cats?
Unfortunately that is what they just did for over a decade
now. The sad fact is that civet cats don’t adapt well in captivity and most die
by having their respiratory system being infected by a SARS like virus due to
being confined in close quarters whose symptoms often include a bloody stool
once a typical infected civet cat passes out coffee beans with their excrement.
Recent hidden camera investigation by various nature and environmental groups
only confirm the mass scale of the civet cats being kept in deplorable battery
farms. Dr. Neil D’Cruze of the World Society of the Protection of Animals had
already called on authorities to stop the unethical production coffee luwak in
the Malay Peninsula that violate existing global animal welfare laws.
