A worker sorting coffee beans at the Luwak Mas coffee factory in Pranggang Village.
The production of Luwak Coffee or Civet Coffee has been denounced by animal activists and the media, yet production of the worlds most expensive coffee continues in Indonesia unabated. Civet coffee is made by feeding captive Asian palm civets coffee berries; the flesh of the berries is digested and the coffee beans excreted. The beans are extracted from the droppings and processed into a coffee that aficionados believe has a distinctive flavour. Every month foreign tourists visit to watch the production process and to taste the coffee. The civets live in narrow cages and are forced to eat an unnatural diet made up almost exclusively of coffee berries. The mammal's digestion process gives the famed flavour. According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) the true cost of the world's most expensive coffee can be seen in the thousands of palm civets being poached from the wild, kept in inhumane, conditions or farmed to meet the growing demand for the coffee.
Size: 4928px × 3264px
Location: Kediri, East Java, Indonesia
Photo credit: © Arief Priyono / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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