The process of feeding civets

The process of feeding civets

Indonesia's "Kopi Luwak" tastes delicious, mellow, sweet and slippery, and its unique smell is even more unforgettable. It is known as gourmet coffee, which is delicious because of its scarcity. It costs NT $6,000 for half a pound. But recently, British media have revealed that Indonesian shops are suspected of abusing Kopi Luwak-producing civet cats (commonly known as masked palm civet), keeping them in tiny cages and feeding them large quantities of coffee beans to force them to increase production.

After eating the coffee beans, the civets complete the fermentation in the stomach, destroying the protein of the coffee beans, producing short peptides and more free amino acids, reducing the bitter taste of the coffee. Because the coffee beans cannot be digested, the civets excrete them and become civets coffee after washing and baking. An eyewitness went straight to a cat shit coffee shop in Sumatra, Indonesia, and found a female civet kept in a narrow cage in the back column of the store, while other smaller civets were kept in more than 20 small cages hidden on the roof and forced to gorge on coffee beans. Traffic, a conservation group that monitors wildlife sales, says similar farms are rising year by year in Southeast Asia, leading to higher and higher mortality rates for civet cats.