Kopi Luwak - Controversy

Controversy

Due to the demand growing numbers of intensive civet "farms" are emerging across south-east Asia, confining tens of thousands of animals to live in tiny cages and be force-fed. '"The conditions are awful, much like battery chickens," said Chris Shepherd, deputy regional director of the conservation NGO Traffic south-east Asia. "The civets are taken from the wild and have to endure horrific conditions. They fight to stay together but they are separated and have to bear a very poor diet in very small cages. There is a high mortality rate and for some species of civet, there's a real conservation risk. It's spiralling out of control. But there's not much public awareness of how it's actually made. People need to be aware that tens of thousands of civets are being kept in these conditions. It would put people off their coffee if they knew."'

Some critics claim more generally that kopi luwak is simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. Dr. Massimo Marcone, who performed extensive chemical tests on the beans (elaborated on later in this article), was unable to conclude if anything about their properties made them superior for purposes of making coffee. He employed several professional coffee tasters (called "cuppers") in a blind taste test. While the cuppers were able to distinguish the kopi luwak as distinct from the other samples, they had nothing remarkable to appraise about it other than it was less acidic and had less body, tasting "thin." Marcone remarked "It's not that people are after that distinct flavor. They are after the rarity of the coffee."