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Demand for Kopi Luwak May Be Threatening Wildlife
Damien1972 writes "Popularization of the world's strangest coffee may be imperiling a a suite of small mammals in Indonesia, according to a new study in Small Carnivore Conservation. The coffee, known as kopi luwak (kopi for coffee and luwak for the civet), is made from whole coffee beans that have passed through the gut of the animal. The coffee is apparently noted for its distinct taste, though some have argued it is little more than novelty. Now, this burgeoning kopi luwak industry is creating 'civet farms,' whereby civets are captured from the wild and kept in cages to eat and crap out coffee beans."
This is most likely to create an inferior product. Not that I think semi-digested pooped out coffee beans is particularly desirable product, but when you try to take some biological process and move it up to an industrial scale, something in the product is lost. It's like the fact that industrial scale cheese never has the same flavour of a cheese made in small batches on a small farm. The kind of grass that the sheep/cows eat, the water they drink, and a lot of other factors play into how the cheese tastes.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Well, it certainly doesn't help the WILD population of civet cats. Maybe when our alien overlords find that our feces is delicious when we are force fed massive quantities of sawdust you will understand.
now i have a good reason not to drink it without seeming squeamish.
It's just another stupid food fad for people with too much money on their hands, like "truffles": horribly-expensive mushrooms that just taste like dirt.
that humans can't suck the complete life out of?
Years ago I went to a lecture given by a food chemist. His research had produced excellent "synthetic coffee" in the 80s and 90s. He said that they had tested the coffee with groups of drinkers who generally found it delicious. So why don't we have synthetic coffee today? Government regulations required that they not use the term "coffee". Essentially, they were forced to call it "coffee substitute" or "synthetic coffee drink" or other such drivel. The result? People thought they were drinking "chemicals", and not coffee. In reality, it was made from organic sources (chickory root, spices, etc.)
The minute people realize that the "chemicals" in kopi luwak are just that - chemicals - the sooner we could just synthesize these in the lab and allow people to have the shit-coffee and leave the civets to romp in their truffula trees.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
I thought, by definition, it was supposed to be good shit.
...tastes like crap
It's a crappy idea at any rate. I think it's simply offal.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
It may not be destroying the planet, but if you look deeper, the Internet is responsible for the domestication of the civet. I certainly never would have heard of civet shit coffee if it hadn't been for the Internet, and the same is true for about 5 billion other people. Yet now thanks to the interwebs, we have all heard of it.
And let's say that 10% of people who hear about it want to try it, and 10% of those can afford to. That's 50 million new customers trying to consume a product that's produced slowly on a few acres of jungle. The internet also enables all those customers to order instantly, flooding this little patch of jungle with money. The locals are doing the only sane thing: trying to squeeze more beans out of this boon, while opportunity seekers flock to the new wealth. That means trapping, domestication, poaching, anything to grab a piece of the pie before their neighbor takes it all. It's just another Gold Rush, only faster.
Really, nothing else could have happened.
John
Truffles have been prized for hundreds of years, and so has coffee.
Truffles taste earthy, that's true, but that doesn't mean that it is going to stop being a prized culinary item because you don't see the point. You may not like them, but many people do.
Fugu is horribly expensive and you need a special license to prepare it, but that hasn't slowed demand for it.
If it's food, and it's tasty, people will always want it. And, there's always going to be a certain cache to having something which is so rare and expensive.
I've never had occasion to try kopi luac, but I know that Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is also ridiculously expensive because of the micro climate and soil it grows in -- because you can't just grow the same coffee elsewhere and get the same results. It's entirely dependent on the soil and the climate.
But lobster used to be considered poor people's food until people discovered how tasty it was. So were oysters, so was sushi. Then people discovered how yummy they were.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I do not know if this is true, but I could see it. I came across a story some time back that claimed to explain the origins of Kopi Luwak coffee. The story was that during colonial times the natives were not allowed to have any of the coffee beans for their own use. They wanted to drink coffee. When they discovered the undigested beans in civet feces, they collected them and made coffee from them. At some later point, Europeans saw the natives drinking this coffee and decided it must be something special, since the natives drank it (never considering that it was the only coffee the natives had access to).
All reports I have seen about blind taste tests suggest that the flavor is thin and inferior to other quality coffees.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
They didn't discover this coffee by feeding something to the civets they wouldn't eat normally.
The civets already eat the fruit and crap out the seed. The civets clearly already liked eating it.
Now, as to how someone made the leap of taking the seeds which have passed through the civet and decided to make coffee out of it ... I couldn't even begin to guess at.
But they are NOT force feeding them something they wouldn't eat normally.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Most people who know coffee say that in blind tests this "Shit" coffee is indistinguishable from cheap ("Shit") coffee.
People are for the most part incredibly stupid.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Now, as to how someone made the leap of taking the seeds which have passed through the civet and decided to make coffee out of it ... I couldn't even begin to guess at.
Wikipedia is your friend...
History:
The origin of kopi luwak is closely connected with the history of coffee production in Indonesia. In the early 18th century the Dutch established the cash-crop coffee plantations in their colony in the Dutch East Indies islands of Java and Sumatra, including Arabica coffee introduced from Yemen. During the era of Cultuurstelsel (1830—1870), the Dutch prohibited the native farmers and plantation workers from picking coffee fruits for their own use. Still, the native farmers wanted to have a taste of the famed coffee beverage. Soon, the natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian Palm Civet) consumed the coffee fruits, yet they left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collected these luwaks' coffee seed droppings, then cleaned, roasted and ground them to make their own coffee beverage. The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favorite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even in colonial times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
I am a big coffee drinker and a very fuzzy one at that. A couple of months ago my brother in law knowing my love for coffee bought me some Kopi Luwak from in Malaysia. I cannot even begin to explain how disappointed I were in the experience of drinking this supposedly fantastic brew. I would not compare it with a cheap coffee as it do have a unique and distinct flavor and aroma that is far from unpleasant that set it apart from any other coffee I have ever had, but it certainly does not live up to the reputation it have and it is in my opinion ridiculously overrated.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Initially civet coffee beans were picked from from wild civet excrement that was to be found around coffee plantations. This unusual process contributed to its rarity and subsequently, its high price. More recently, growing numbers of intensive civet "farms" have been established and operated across Southeast 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"'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
before they destroy us all!
Anybody that wants to drink coffee that was crapped out of an animal has jumped the shark as a human being.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Yes. The Civet.
Already farmed for centuries, for the "musk..."
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Get-the-Best-Perfume-From-the-Cat-039-s-Ass-48517.shtml
"It's the cats ass!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Classic obligatory column on Kopi Luwak. Definitely a memorable description of his experience with it.
That actually doesn't matter. If only self-selected "wine tasters" can taste the best wines, it still only matters to them, and the rest of us can do just fine with a bottle of Ripple or whatever.
It's the same in the world of expensive musical instruments. Blind testing by experts, virtuosos, and violin-makers all revealed that given the choice they'd take home a $100 violin that was made three days ago, over a million dollar Stradivarius, because honestly there is no difference in the quality of the sound, or the playability of the instrument. This is in fact true of just about everything.
One way people sucker each other out of lots of money is by making you think you're getting the elite, cream of the crop product. See also expensive stereo equipment where people blow $10,000 on a turntable because it's got vacuum-sealed rotary overhead cams and a fucking flux capacitor built in, but it still turns the record at 33 and 1/3 rpm, no more, no less. There's a lot of money in prestige, and perception is more important than reality.
If you are comfortable with your perceptions that's great, but please don't kid yourself. You are paying many times the needed price for a difference that is proven to not be real.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Well, I'm convinced: it's our civet doodie not to support this animal cruelty.
Get off my launchpad!