NORFOLK, Va., US – American animal rights organization PETA has sent an urgent letter to Jeff Bezos, president and CEO of Amazon.com, urging him to pull all listings for kopi luwak—or civet coffee— from the website.
Kopi luwak, which sells for hundreds of dollars per pound, is made from the beans of coffee berries that have been eaten and excreted by Asian palm civets, but a PETA Asia investigator who visited civet coffee farms in Indonesia and the Philippines—two of the world’s largest producers of kopi luwak—documented that civets were confined to tiny cages and suffered from malnutrition and skin infections.
Undercover video footage shows how the civets incessantly pace or spin—indications that they’re going insane from confinement and depression. It was also revealed that some farms falsely advertise their beans as wild-sourced.
PETA is also asking consumers to join in asking Amazon to pull the cruelly produced product.
“Drinking coffee made from beans picked out of feces isn’t the most revolting aspect of civet coffee—it’s how cruelly these animals are farmed that should make anyone sick,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk.
“The idea that civets are factory-farmed in tiny crates should leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, including Mr. Bezos’.”
In the wild, civets frequently climb trees to reach the ripe coffee berries, but in captivity, they are fed more of the fruit than would ever be natural for them.
One farmer explained that civets are generally kept caged for around three years and that the stress of confinement and lack of nutrition cause them to lose their fur.
Another farmer compared civets eating too many coffee berries to humans smoking, as the civets’ health deteriorates greatly during captivity because of a lack of vitamins and nutrition.
That same farmer also told PETA Asia’s investigator that many civets don’t survive after they are released back into the wild because of their deteriorated state following years of stress and nutritional deprivation.
