Gourmet Coffee Made From Poop

Humans show an amazing capacity to make life miserable for any animal that can help them make a buck. Evidence of this can be found in Bali, where civets are held in horrific captivity in order to literally poop out the world’s most expensive cup of coffee.

It’s the world’s most expensive coffee, and it’s made from poop. Or rather, it’s made from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by the civet, a catlike creature. A cup of kopi luwak, as it’s known, can sell for as much as $80 in the United States.

Civets are being caged and fed a diet of coffee cherries to generate a smoother, less acidic, coffee bean. This is a result of the interaction of a digestive enzyme that modifies the raw coffee bean as it is processed by the civet. More and more civets are being confined in cages to process more and more coffee beans.

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. The results, published Thursday in the journal Animal Welfare, paint a grim picture.

The tragic irony is that by caging the civets and force feeding them bulk picked coffee cherries results in an inferior product. Yet, one that is aggressive marketed as a gourmet item.

All of this for a luxury item—and a second-rate one, at that. Part of what makes kopi luwak so special, experts say, is that wild civets pick and choose the choicest coffee cherries to eat. Keeping civets in cages and feeding them any old cherries leads to an inferior product.

Run a Google search for kopi luwak and you will find dozens of sources for "wild" civet coffee with exorbitant prices. All is described as harvested from wild civets, but there is no process to certify the veracity of such claims.

No certification scheme exists to ensure that coffee labeled “wild” is actually that. And other coffee certifiers working to ensure environmentally responsible farming and production refuse to certify any kopi luwak whatsoever.

Reputable coffee brokers avoid kopi luwak as the likelihood of it being a product of caged and abused civets is very high. The advice of a top coffee certification expert is simple:

Alex Morgan at the Rainforest Alliance, which uses SAN standards, says it’s too risky to certify kopi luwak. It’s just too hard to establish whether the beans are 100 percent wild-sourced or not.

“My personal advice is generally to avoid it,” he said. “More likely than not it’s going to be coming from a caged production landscape.”