This is the final close up day for the Asian Palm Civet with a focus on the Kopi Luwak Industry and their treatment of the Asian Palm Civet. Kopi Luwak is Indonesian and translates to Coffee (Kopi) and Asian Palm Civet (Luwak). Kopi Luwak comes from Asian Palm Civet eating coffee cherries, not fully digesting the inner coffee stone/bean, and defecating the beans. This digestion process does change the coffee bean’s chemical composition. Once the bean is cleaned, dried, roasted, and brewed into coffee, it does create a different tasting coffee. Why would anyone take coffee beans from the stool of an animal? During Indonesia’s colonization times, Dutch colonizers and plantation owners would grow Arabica coffee as a cash crop. However, the Dutch plantation owners would not allow the local Indonesians, including those who worked on the farms, to try the coffee. These locals noticed the coffee beans in the Asian Palm Civet stool and decided to clean, dry, roast, and brew these coffee beans. Eventually the Dutch plantation owners found out, tried this coffee, agreed the coffee was good, and decided to sell it. Initially, the Kopi Luwak Industry helped the Asian Palm Civet. The Toddy Cat was considered a pest of coffee and fruit farms because they would steal fruit. As Kopi Luwak became more popular, this industry helped encourage the protection of the Toddy Cats. Why is Kopi Luwak so expensive? At first, wild civet poop was collected from coffee plantations and from the forests where wild civets roamed. Finding and gathering this stool was very time consuming and difficult so with greater demand than product, the coffee became more expensive. As Kopi Luwak became more popular, the Civets were captured and caged to make it easier to get their stool and keep up with the growing demand. However, even with caged civets, the price of this coffee has stayed high for both the consumer and the civets. In 2013, the BBC news team investigated some Kopi Luwak Plantations. They found the Asian Palm Civets kept in inhuman conditions that went against the natural behavior of these civets. Normally, wild Asian Palm Civets are very territorial, enjoy solitude, sleep during the day, hunt during the night, and only eat the ripest of coffee cherries along with many other foods. At these coffee farms, Asian Palm Civets were found to be kept in very small cages that were close together. These cages were not regularly cleaned and these Toddy Cats are forced to walk on the dirty metal cage floors 24/7 causing sores and open wounds on their feet. Tourists and workers on these plantations would keep these civets awake during daylight hours and ruin their normal nocturnal sleeping patterns. Many Toddy Cats were thin and malnourished from a singular diet of coffee cherries. While others became obese from not being able to run around. Many would run in circles in their cages trying to get find ways out. They would also lose fur and get constipated from their diets. When the Asian Palm Civets were not useful to the plantations anymore, they would be sold to live animal markets or released back into the wild. If they were sold to live animal markets, then they could become potential disease carriers and spreaders in their poor health. Researchers have documented that certain strains of the SARS virus can transfer from these civets to humans and these live markets became a disease breeding ground. If they are released back into the wild after being caged, they are too weak to survive long and die soon after. From the articles and news I was able to find, the Kopi Luwak industry does not have regulations regularly making, checking, or enforcing any rules on the care of caged civets nor what is allowed to be labelled as wild Kopi Luwak. Businesses buying and selling Kopi Luwak to consumers can advertise their coffee as being sourced from wild sources without anyone checking if it is or not. Even the businesses trying to be responsible and source their Kopi Luwak from wild sources can be lied to by middle men or the managers of the Kopi Luwak plantations. Sometimes caged and wild civet coffee beans are mixed and passed off for wild civet Kopi Luwak. Is there anything we can do to help? Yes and it will even save us money. Do not buy Kopi Luwak. Do not create a demand for this product. Vote with your dollar by not buying what you do not want to support. Spread the word of the harm this product is causing to the civets and that Kopi Luwak advertised as wild is not necessarily from wild civets. There are so many other choices of coffee out there that are not harming Asian Palm Civets or other animals. Please continue to enjoy your coffee at a price that does not hurt your wallet and the animals and environment producing it. Asian Palm Civet Facts
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Paradoxurus_hermaphroditus/ http://animalia.bio/asian-palm-civet https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kopi-Luwak The Asian Palm Civet and the Kopi luwak coffee industry https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160429-kopi-luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-24034029 https://theexoticbean.com/blog/coffee-types/history-kopi-luwak-coffee-from-civets/ (Disclaimer: I am not advertising for this website and I am not encouraging you to buy the products found on this website. This website was used as a reference for the history of Kopi Luwak only). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/what-is-the-true-cost-of-the-worlds-most-expensive-coffee/7C883DA427A9B6B5F8D795C511648B20 https://investigations.peta.org/kopi-luwak-coffee-cruelty/
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Artist and Blogger
I'm just a doodling artist. My current style started in a lecture class at MCLA where I began doodling in my notebooks. Now I've started a new series focusing on animals. Archives
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