Civet Cats Coffee Bean. In most parts of the world excrement from wild animals is considered waste. At my local specialty coffee bean store, it sells for $420 per pound—or $10 for a 10 oz.
Kopi luwak is a rare coffee bean that occurs naturally in indonesia. The civet cat eats the bean and poops it out. Civet cats were selective in their bean choices and would only eat ripened coffee cherries that were ready for harvest.
The result is a cleaner coffee bean with less chance of mold, fungus or fermentation during later processing stages.
Keeping the taste, freeing the cats. Asian palm civets are increasingly caught in the wild. Fter about 24 to 36 hours the coffee beans eaten by the palm civet cat are defecated. As a solution for the unsustainable and inhumane treatment towards civet cats, a vietnamese coffee brand partnered up with a team of german scientists in 1996 to study the effect of the civet cats on coffee and duplicate a natural enzyme soak process that would approximate the same effect.