So why are you buying Kopi Luwak Coffee for Christmas? Because the news said it tastes good? Maybe it's a status thing and you want everyone to know how much extra cash you have to spend on luxury coffee.... well.. here's why you SHOULDN'T purchase Kopi Luwak inherently supporting the industry.

According to Apo Pedring, I just tasted "the most effective aphrodisiac in the world". Headline News on October 7, 2016 told this story of reporter Jun Pasayalo and his first encounter with the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world. The most bizarre part about Pasayalo’s encounter, however, is that he could’ve died from the taste.

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention on May 3rd, 2005 reported that from November 2002 through July 2003, a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, that was accompanied by either pneumonia or respiratory distress syndrome (probable cases). Of these, 774 died. National Geographic on April 29, 2016 argues that in Bali, the Philippines, and Indonesia farms house civet cats in horrific caged environments, where they suffer from confinement, horrible leg problems, fighting, internal bleeding, and death. If the treatment of civet cats isn’t horrific enough it also has direct implications for human survival.

There are two main problems with the production of Kopi Luwak and our treatment of civet cats. The first stems from the animal cruelty in making the luxury coffee and the second comes from how this animal abuse leads to super plagues with a global reach . The award winning PBS documentary “Our World: Coffee’s Cruel Secret” explains that most civet cats involved in the Kopi Luwak trade live their entire lives without ever seeing the sun, and many are confined in cages too small for them to even turn around. Animals are kept captive, force fed, and left filthy, sick, and abused.The cats unlucky enough to be put in lower cages are covered in a continuous downpour of urine, fecal matter, and blood. The system is far from regulator and regulations, and a handy bribe can always make an animal torture problem disappear.

But even if you never plan on drinking weasel poop based coffee, your health is still at risk. The mass production of kopi luwak is dangerous enough to become a contagious biohazard. Consumption of civet cat made products has been known to sicken humans at rapid speeds. On July 29th, 2004, The US National Library of Health published an article written by Diana Bell, Scott Roberton, and Paul R. Hunter in which they argued that, during the 2002/2003 SARS outbreak, scientists discovered that the origin of the virus derived from civet cats living in horrible conditions in China. And, once plagues like SARS make the jump from civets to people, they grow like wildfire.

In 2003, SARS Reference by Bernard Sebastian Kamps and Christian Hoffmann illustrated just how easy it was for SARS to spread rapidly by close human contact. For example, in February 0f 2003, a single doctor with asymptomatic SARS travelled from Guangdong, China to Hong Kong. 12 other guests and visitors in his hotel were infected within a single day, and they then proceeded to unknowingly spread the disease throughout Hong Kong, which is a global hub for transportation and tourism. Living in extremely close quarters, under terrifying conditions, with proximity of cat to human contact make it likely that a civet-based SARS outbreak could happen again, and be spread around the globe for around $80 per cup.

Ignorance to the origin of our daily coffee consumptions has allowed for the ongoing of unregulated, ignored, abuse. This is difficult to combat considering coffee is the lifeblood for many around the world. StarbucksInternationalCoffee.com states that Starbucks has 24,000 stores worldwide, a 32.46 billion dollar business according to Know Your Grinder in April of 2016. Coffee is a fad and a culture and the implications of consumption are pervasive. When is the last time you asked your barista as where your coffee came from? It’s something that simply doesn’t happen.

Beyond ignorance and perhaps more-so immediate, farm factories are using the civet cats for financial benefit. Tony Wild was among one the first proponents of Kopi Luwak however now that he has witnessed this horrible industry he is one of the leading activists against it. The Guardian.com September 19th, 2014, Tony Wild states," I feel as if long ago I must have inadvertently put my finger on the pulse of some monstrous zeitgeist, a grotesque cancer that constantly mutates into yet more violent and virulent forms." This statement articulates just how dangerous the Kopi Luwak industry has become.

The first thing we can do as a society is to individually educate ourselves. By spreading our knowledge of what kopi luwak is and sharing it with others through social media and other sources, we can begin to fix this problem ourselves. Time Magazine reported on October 2nd, 2013, that a global media campaign called Kopi Luwak: Cut the Crap is starting to gain followers and attention. Another solution is to end factory farming. The Change For Animals Foundation at CFAF.com is an organization that specifically is aimed at protecting Indonesian animals from Kopi Luwak traders. The foundation serves as a human voice for these animals and works to enforce laws the protecting them. Here you can make donations to their efforts and even follow along and contribute and their campaign for protecting civet cats.

Even PETA has jumped on board, creating a petition to end the civet cat suffering now for cruel Kopi Luwak coffee. The petition can be accessed online simply by searching for PETA and civet cats.

With all of these in mind the best solution is to remove both civet cats and cruelty from the process of making Kopi Luwak entirely. Inventors and food chemists are busily working on alternatives to traditional Kopi Luwak that replicate the complex chemical reactions necessary to manufacture the coffee in laboratories instead of intestines. NewAge consulting is an internet web design and structure firm that promotes currently available alternatives to civet cat coffee that are 100% free of any animal cruelty. Artificial Kopi luwak has no animal involvement, natural enzymatic stimulation of the rare and expensive Kopi Luwak coffee, and it tastes identical to the original flavor.

If we act together, we can create a world where exotic, expensive coffee flavors come with a double-shot of ethics and splash of basic compassion.

And anyways, $1 coffee tastes better anyways. Bottoms Up