Civet coffee, or kopi luwak, is marketed as a luxury product made from coffee beans that have passed through the digestive tract of civets, small nocturnal mammals native to Southeast Asia. Once hailed as the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world, with some cups priced as high as £50, civet coffee is now widely sold online for as little as £15 per packet. 

The true cost of civet coffee:

The cheap price and wide availability of civet coffee has been made possible via industrialized production methods. Instead of collecting beans from wild civet droppings as often claimed, producers are now capturing wild civets, confining them in dirty barren cages, and force-feeding them coffee cherries under harrowing conditions.

Civets in civet coffee farms suffer immensely. Wild civets are caught using inhumane methods, they suffer severe injuries, and are confined without proper care, bio-security, or veterinary oversight.” This not only violates animal welfare standards, but also poses a significant public health risk, as civets have been identified as potential vectors for diseases including SARS and COVID-19.

Beyond the animal cruelty concerns, the environmental cost is also severe. Civets play a vital ecological role as seed dispersers and pest controllers. Their removal from the wild is contributing to biodiversity loss and environmental degradation across Southeast Asia. Not only is the environmental damage significant, but multiple species of civets are captured for civet coffee production including those that are protected and listed as at risk from extinction. Without an independent certification scheme, it is not possible to determine the origin species or method of production for civet coffee.

Consumer interest:

Previous campaigns against the sale of caged-produced civet coffee were met with much public support. So much so that leading UK retailers, including Harrods, initially removed non-certified civet coffee from their UK shelves. However, the collapse of civet coffee certification since that time has gone without press attention and consumers are likely unaware that there is currently no independent certification scheme for civet coffee production. 

The Civet Project Foundation’s recent investigation into the online sale of civet coffee found that fraudulent claims of civet coffee certification were commonplace on Amazon, eBay and Etsy, which further misleads consumers. 

Civet coffee sellers often marketed their civet coffee products with consumer assurances such as “100% wild collected”, “high welfare” and “certified cage-free”. Of the 543 civet coffee product listings the charity investigated, none were officially certified by independent bodies.

Sellers falsely claimed certification from organisations such as WWF, Rainforest Alliance, and World Animal Protection, all of whom confirmed no affiliation with civet coffee.

By selling civet coffee with fraudulent animal welfare claims, sellers and platforms exploit consumer interest in animal welfare. False welfare assurances deceived consumers into purchasing products that are reliant on animal suffering.

Stop the sale of civet coffee:

We call on Amazon, eBay and Etsy to include civet coffee products in their list of prohibited items. We urge them to do so on the basis that civet coffee products violate the following policies:

• The UK’s CMA Green Code and Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
• eBay, Amazon and Etsy’s Intellectual Property policies 
• eBay’s Item Description policy ( “item descriptions must be accurate”).
• eBay’s Prohibited Items policy (eBay is ”committed to animal welfare and the protection of native, endangered, and threatened species, so products from endangered or protected species can’t be listed”).
• Amazon’s Prohibited Claims policy (sellers “must ensure that the environmental claims you make about your product are not misleading”).
• Amazon’s Animals and Animal-Related Products policy (“products promoting or media containing animal abuse” and “products made from endangered or threatened species” are prohibited).
• Amazon's Supply Chain Standards (suppliers are encouraged to “source commodities used in products in a way that respects local communities and protects ecosystems”)
• Etsy’s Seller policy (sellers must ensure “accurate representation of how the item was made, by whom, and where it is being dispatched from”).
• Etsy’s Prohibited Items policy (products that include “risk of harm to live, companion, or at-risk animals” are prohibited).
• Etsy’s Environmental Impact Goals (Etsy strives to be “a destination for sustainably minded shoppers” and for “reducing the environmental impact of shopping and fulfillment of life cycles, and creating experiences that promote circularity”).