The biggest problem: the civets are held in catastrophic conditions. Cages as big as shoe boxes. Just for shitty coffee. I hate humans.
(german source: https://www.peta.de/themen/kopi-luwak/ )
(english source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-24034029 )
[food] comes from [animal]!
learn more
[animal] is subjected to the most horrific conditions imaginable to produce [food].
yeah, that’s usually how it goes.
They didn’t used to be, but once there was a demand and market for shit coffee then they capitalised.
I remember reading an article by the guy the that brought attention to it saying how much he regretted it.
I had the opportunity to try this when I was in Indonesia. The place I was at was a cafe advertising the most expensive coffee in the world, I think it was approximately USD$30 for a cup at the time (almost 10 years ago).
I remember seeing the example cages with civets inside them and a description of how it’s made (plus a conversation with a friend I was travelling with), and decided not to try it.
Do you remember where in Indonesia that was? I visited one near Bandung not realising what this coffee actually was. Bit like you I left without trying or buying. The place was a visitor centre and we weren’t allowed to look at the actual farm.
Well hey, lucky us, we’re about to find out if I’m a lier! I just spent 30+ mins digging through photos. Is this a civet?
It’s not geotagged, it was taken with an average 10 years ago digital camera, but based on the photos taken at the same time, it’s in the general area of Borobudur, but not actually at that temple. My best guess is near Prambanan. Possibly we stopped somewhere on the taxi ride from one to the other.
I don’t think we went to Bandung, or at least I don’t remember stopping there. My memory is fuzzy but I think we drove from Jakarta to Yogyakarta so must have at least passed nearby. The place wasn’t an actual farm though, just a place serving the coffee with an example civet outside.
Blimmin heck! Appreciate the effort in digging that photo up! It doesn’t sound like the same place though.
I’ve done a similar journey in the past and there’s places to stop everywhere. Even in a jungle in north Sulawesi at night, middle of no where, some fella selling durian in a cabin next to a dirt road.
This is covering a few experiences across Indonesia. We stopped at a frozen food shop which had 2 lions in small cages. Stopped at a private collector to see the world’s smallest primate (which I can’t remember the name of now) to find chimpanzees in cages bearly large enough to hold them. Driver stopped at a village which was ravaged by a volcano and people rebuilding their houses, asked if we wanted to stop to take pictures. Asked if we want to visit a wet market selling dog meat. Mid 2000’s, driver asked if we wanted to stop by at the scene of the Bali bombings for photos. Went to a turtle sanctuary to find them baking in bad conditions. Went to a coral reef to find some of the worse plastic pollution I’ve personally seen. Don’t even start me on Jakarta! Although that pace is improving in recent years
Place is crazy. Total lack of consideration for animals and people, unless religion or culture is involved, then the rules are strict. I got in trouble once for handing money over with my left hand.
Totally different to what I’m used to! Place is nuts.
I just had the one trip, about a week in Jakarta (including a friend’s wedding), some time in Yogyakarta and Borobudur, and then were met up with the married couple and spent some time in Bali (my least favourite place, super touristy).
We didn’t have quite the offers you got!
Jakarta is crazy. We spent 3 hours in traffic to drive 28km one day. We saw a big apartment building and one next to it on a lean and gutted. Apparently they built one, it was on a lean, so they built it again next door, stripping the first on for materials.
Went up the big tower/monument thing, there is city as far as the eye can see. In fact, flying over Indonesia there aren’t really any large open spaces. Even farm land has buildings around the edge of each field.
I also drank a locally made rice based alcohol drink that if I knew about the risks I probably wouldn’t have drunk it.
At least this one the money goes to help the elephants and the people protecting them.
Thankfully I don’t drink cofee or alcohol, but have tried nicotine. People should live at least as healthy as me (and I’ll probably die at 60).
That is a legendary grumper though.
The thing is, it tastes good. It’s very smooth, the beans are cleaned & roasted in an oven for 20-28 mins. Ground. Then probably, likely mixed with boiling water unless you’re doing cold brew.
It’s very sanitary & idk as others say maybe it’s because the animals eat the best cherries & it’s got nothing to do with the digestion. In any case: it is tasty.
What I want to know is, what was someone smoking when they decided they should try making coffee out of literal sh#t. I want the details on how it was discovered.
eating cat poop: 👎 drinking cat poop: 👍
I guess you can eat the coffee beans too
i would wager that any coffee given the special care that this stuff is given will taste really quite good, and certainly good enough that there’s no reason to perform animal abuse to get this specific kind.
If I recall Coyote Peterson’s crew ate some… yep, haha. They definitely thought some of the essence of dung carried over to the final product.
Coffee Connoisseurs:
Incredible how humans always find ways of abusing more animals.
You can still get kopi luwak that’s solely from wild civets–rather than captive–but the price is astronomical. I think that the last time I looked it up–more than a decade ago–it was something like $150+/pound.
I assumed you were full of shit about this being abusive but then I looked it up and oops
Why would you ever assume an animal agriculture practice wouldn’t be abusive?
The bees seem kinda chill about it. They can just kinda fuck off after all.
Beekeeping is a real problem, especially since it became a new hobby for some people. It’s advertised as helping to save the bees but in reality the honey bees are not in danger. They are the danger - to wild bees and other local insects.
Thats a seperate matter from animal abuse though, also I live in a region with lots of orchards (or atleast used to have) so bee keeping is just kinda a factor.
Yes it’s not abuse but still a man-made problem for animals, which is why I mentioned it.
Not sure where the debate is this moment but from my understanding, vegans won’t eat honey.
I won’t speak for other vegans, but my research into beekeeping and honey production turned me against the industry for the following reasons:
- Beekeepers will commonly clip the wings of queens to keep them from swarming or leaving.
- Semen is commonly extracted from bees by crushing them.
- Honey taken from hives is commonly replaced with a nutrient-devoid sugar solution, affecting the health of the bees.
- Selective breeding of honeybees has made them more susceptible to diseases which can also affect native insects.
- Honeybees have been shown to cause serious disruptions to plant-pollinator networks, putting local pollinators at great risk.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/
Thanks for the bullet points and link, comrade.
I have a cousin who’s vegan and I was legit curious about this, and she literally said exactly that - “the bees can leave if they want”, but from what I understand there are other vegans who disagree
The moment an animal is involved in the process of making money they are bred, caged and treated only as “good” as needed so they stay alive.
We’ve done the same with people… Fuck capitalism and all its sociopathic sycophants.
Indeed
humans are animals too so we’ve not really progressed that far
If someone served me literal-shit coffee, I’d punch them in the mouth.
Fitting username
Did you enjoy a nice coprophilic coffee with your low hanging fruit?
Who on earth discovered this and why?
So Kopi Luwak comes from Indonesia. At that time, Indonesia was under the dutch. At that time there was a famine caused by the dutch cause they were doing some unpaid labor and all the crops that they force the locals to plant is cash crops, so not edible. That caused a massive famine, so of course some starving guy decided why not try eating the poop of the animal.
Someone with the worst caffeine headache ever, desperate for something to make it go away.
“Fine! I’ll drink the raccoon shit coffee!”
FINNALLY
LITERALLY SHITPOST
Couldn’t we just get rid of the animals and just ferment the beans ourselves by using the bacteria in their guts?
No, people would rather abuse animals if there’s any alternative.
Just start asking people why they won’t eat fake meat and you’ll get all kinds of irrational half-assed answers about how we need to continue locking up animals. Hell, animal abusers will bash lab-grown meat — they’ll do literally anything but acknowledge their actions contribute to animal misery.
The terror adds the tangy flavor.
Don’t give people ideas on gut bacteria harvesting please
People have done that https://sprudge.com/shock-portland-man-sells-human-poop-coffee-on-craigslist-30242.html
I have tasted it. Not the shit, mind you, but the coffee brewed from the beans. It was coffee. Nothing special. Not even a bit nutty.
Not the shit
I would hope it’s not
there is a lot of kopi luwak fraud, so it’s possible you drank any old coffee and paid out the ass for it. an idea why kopi luwak presumably tastes so good is also that these civets have a very varied diet that enriches the coffee a lot, but caged civets are fed exclusively coffee beans and therefore the coffee won’t even taste very good, so even if you did have real kopi luwak it’d probably taste underwhelming.
I have no doubt about the fact that it was legit stuff. The beans were bought from a reputable vendor and brewed at a reputable cafeteria. It was different for sure, but nothing that would swoon you.
The whole thing is based on the speciality of the way the beans are produced. They sell an image of excellence and rarity, but in the end it’s just coffee.
That’s a big shit for a small animal
Probably from years of being force-fed
There’s not much nutrition on a coffee fruit, so civets have to consume a whole bunch per day. This results in excessively large poops.
- source: my 8yo nephew, who knows far too much about poop.
In case your nephew is unaware, you can make him very happy by telling him that wombat poo is cubic.
If you’re thrifty like myself you can eat the beans yourself for a homemade version
This was addressed in the movie 'The Bucket List’s and I always wondered if there was any truth to it. Now I know. I also know, unconfirmed, that the animals are not treated well for their piece in the process. Take it with a grain of salt. I’m not rich or hardcore enough to even worry about this level of coffee, but interesting information none-the-less.
I was told by a producer and seller, that they would keep the animal hostage for only a few months and would let them free afterwards.
What I heard, was “we force feed them coffee for a few months, let them free in a somewhat controlled environment and setup traps to catch them again and abuse them again for a few months”
I am not sure if I believe them about letting them free at all.
It’s really cheap if you buy it local. When I was on vacation in Laos, there were signs on the side of the road for 0.5kg of the stuff for $5 usd equivalent. I didn’t try it because I’ve heard of the animal rights issues.
I’m from one of the country in question and I’m certain animal welfare is far at the bottom of the list of our priorities.
Even our famous endangered species like Orangutans fight losing battles against palm fruit oil producers ravaging their natural forest habitat.
So yeah, that’s what happens when the majority of the population still needs to compete for food with the animals.
Greed and corruption are widespread everywhere it’s exhausting.
Ya. I’m good on poop coffee.
