Civet cats cruelly abused for the civet cat poop coffee business in ghastly Indonesian farms

Civet cat poop farm. Screenshot from PETA video.

OPINION: I bumped into this picture (below) of the civet cat as it used to be called. As you can see this species of small mammal looks like a cat but it isn't. It is more closely related to mongooses. Many years ago, they were called civet cats when scientists classified animals by their appearance only. Nowadays we have DNA analysis which tells us this is not a member of the cat family.

Civet cat. Image in public domain.

It's a good picture because it shows you how in some ways they are similar to domestic cats but the muzzle is much longer. The civet that you see in the picture is a large spotted civet which is endangered in south-east Asia. They are eaten in China and may be extinct in China. Their main threat is deforestation to make way for palm oil plantations as they live in forests. Another example of human behaviour destroying habitats and the animals that live in those habitats.

For the civet it is worse than just destroying habitat. I didn't need to go far to bump into more abuse of wild animals. In this case the abuse of civets for the simple reason that their poop is used to make coffee; very expensive coffee. Can you believe that?

Civet poop coffee

This fashionable trend started some years ago and animal exploiters jumped on it. It is called the 'kopi luwak' industry in Indonesia. It is coffee made from civet cat poop. The reason that it can be made from faeces is because the civets eat coffee beans and therefore, they defecate some of the coffee beans in their poop. That is how it works as I understand it. Apparently, the coffee so produced tastes less bitter than conventional coffee.

PETA Asia investigated the Indonesian farms where civets are kept in abysmal conditions. They say that the sensitive Asian palm civet cats are constantly confined to cramped wire cages and fed a restrictive diet of coffee cherries.

As you might expect the animals become terribly stressed and anxious. They pace which is a displacement activity to try and cope with stress. They try and escape their filthy prisons. They have to eat this unnatural diet as it produces excrement they can be sold as "civet cat poop coffee" a.k.a. kopi luwak.

PETA says that some of the civets go insane. Indonesia is the world's top producer of this ridiculous form of coffee bean. You can buy this sort of coffee in cafés worldwide.

The tourists who drink it are aware of the animal cruelty behind it. They should be enlightened. That's why I am writing this to contribute towards that enlightenment.

The Asian palm civets are a protected species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). But they aren't, are they? That particular treaty is a complete failure as far as I am concerned. It is routinely ignored and unenforced.

PETA says that there is "pervasive cruelty on every single farm". These are nocturnal animals. They cannot express their natural behaviour obviously. They have no dark place to sleep and therefore do not get enough rest. When they were observed they panted "incessantly in the inescapable heat". Some had bloody wounds and appeared not to be receiving veterinary care. Some were losing their fur because of malnourishment.

Those in this ghastly business say that their civet cat poop is wild sourced but it isn't. More lies. Thankfully, because of PETA Asia's many investigations over 10 years some outlets have made the decision to pull kopi luwak from their shelves and to cut ties with this cruel industry.

Disappointingly, distributors in Japan, where there is one of the biggest civet cat poop markets, choose to continue to profit from this gross animal cruelty.

Further comment: I despair to be honest. There's no reason on God's earth why people need to drink coffee made from an animal's faeces! It just is ridiculous in the first place but to compound the ridiculousness of this form of human behaviour, humans have to be cruel to the animals that produce the poop. It's a double whammy of madness. When is the human going to grow up, stop being so stupid, stop being so self-indulgent, stop being so cruel to animals and start to be civilised?

For a moment it's just you, your dog, a sunset and some peace

We all have a need, on occasion, to remove ourselves from the human world to find some peace. To stop the clamouring of human activity around us. To stop the demands upon us. To walk away from the complexities of human life. And you can temporarily achieve some calm and some distance from humans by sitting on the beach with your dog as we see in the video. They look out towards the sunset. It is just them and the nature, the healer.

The man is with nature. Nature in the form of his dog and the sunset represents the universe.

A lot of people like to take up sailing so that they can be alone in the almost unimaginable amount of space the oceans offer. It is the sense of space that people sometimes crave; I do. And often they have to live in urban environments where there is a lack of space; I do. Where sometimes things just close in on you.

I think people buy houses by the seaside so they can look out towards the sea where there are no people. It provides an inner peace through visual space without interference of humans.

And this dude on the beach with his dog is temporarily enjoying such a moment. He is sitting with a great friend, perhaps his best friend and that feeling is mutual. The dog looks up to their caregiver as the alpha leader. They trust their human caregiver implicitly. They expect their human to behave like a benevolent alpha leader who guides and who is concerned for their welfare.

For a human to breach that trust is a terrible thing. It happens to often. And the cat looks up to their caregiver as their surrogate mother. It is very similar but with a slight difference.

We hardly ever see a cat sitting with a man or a woman on a beach looking out towards the sunset. But don't believe that it is impossible. You will see some wonderfully leash trained cats on the Internet who have learnt to behave like dogs on a lead and who are not frightened when a lot is happening around them.

Perhaps that should be the goal of millions of people today who keep their cats inside full-time. This training allows the owner to provide their cat with outdoor stimulation safely. That is one of the duties of a caregiver and it is expected of them by their domestic cat companion!

Be the person that your dog or cat thinks you are!

Ricky Gervais, a well-known animal advocate, tweeted the above saying. Actually, he only referred to dogs but the same applies to cats in my view with a slight difference, which is why I have a section on cats as well on this page.

It is a very pertinent/important saying. If you aren't sure why, I will, with your permission, explain.

Dogs

The domestic dog regards their human caregiver as the alpha. The human caregiver's family is the wolf pack. The dog looks up to the alpha who is the leader of the pack. This accounts in part for their incredible loyalty. Loyalty which allows the human caregiver if they go wrong to abuse their dog and the dog to accept it. 

When that happens, it is something terrible to behold because it is a complete breach of trust and it must be incredibly confusing to the domestic dog to be attacked by the leader of the pack.

This is because the leader of the pack has duties such as guiding, teaching and caring for their pack members. The alpha wolf leads their pack to improved survival chances under difficult conditions. The pack members look to their leader for that kind of guidance.

The alpha wolf is a benevolent dictator if you like. But they must be benevolent. They must behave nicely towards their pack members.

Going back to the title to this post, it is saying that the dog's caregiver/owner should be benevolent towards their dog. It is what their dog is expecting of them. It is what their dog thinks that their human is like. 

The domestic dog's expectation is that their owner is going to be a decent person and in response to that known expectation the person MUST be decent. There is a strong obligation on dog owners to treat their dogs well in order to meet with their dog's expectations.

Gervais and dog. He is the person they think humans should be. Image: Twitter.

Cat

The domestic cat is not by nature a member of a pack. We know that domestic cats are essentially solitary although they have become very sociable creatures throughout the 10,000 years of domestication. This is because they live in human homes where there is often more than one person and pet.

But essentially, the domestic cat views their human caregiver as a surrogate mother. A parent. A mother who cares for them and looks after them. Who feeds them. Who keeps them safe. Who prioritises security.

The cat looks to their mother to provide them with warmth and tender loving care. In the wild, the mother also teaches their kittens how to hunt and survive. The human doesn't do that but in caring for them they keep their cat in a state of permanent kittenhood, in effect.

The domestic cat has a reliance upon the human and that reliance is dependent upon the human acting and behaving decently at all times. That is the cat's expectation. There is an obligation on the human to meet this expectation.

If they are cruel to their cat, once again the animal is confused, bemused, anxious and frightened. It would be a breach of trust once again by the human. It would be a breach too of the unwritten agreement between human and domestic cat which is one of mutual support.

We can't show what the Vietnamese cat meat traders do to cats as it is too graphic

Philosophically speaking

Funny that? What the Vietnamese cat and dog meat traders do to cats and dogs is so bad and so graphic that we can't show it. I understand that. We shouldn't see the most gruesomely cruel aspects of this business because it harms us. 

Philosophically speaking that is a very peculiar thing to say. We can protect ourselves from looking at the extreme cruelty that humans perpetrate upon cats but at the same time we allow that extreme cruelty to take place. If that isn't speciesism, I don't know what is.

The fact that looking at extreme animal cruelty is harmful to us surely must remind us that it should never happen. The best way to protect ourselves from looking at extreme animal cruelty is to not do the animal cruelty in the first place!

Vietnam

Vietnam is as bad as China when it comes to cat and dog meat. They treat stray and domestic cats as free livestock to be snatched from the streets and brutally killed and then eaten. It's a good business because the livestock is free! There's no need to farm the livestock, to feed it, to care for it. They simply steal it and kill it.

The tweet

And it's not just dog meat trade that's common. Cat meat trade is also very common in Vietnam. I cannot share most of the content our brave volunteers in Hanoi, Vietnam were able to collect because it's just too graphic but this is how they are cramped up in cages.

The video

I cannot watch this video. I simply uploaded it. It comes from Twitter. One thing comes to mind immediately. These are defeated animals. And they are thrust together, crammed into a disgusting cage, in the most abysmal conditions. 

Domestic cats have a home range normally. They need space around them. In an ideal world that space might be many acres. Here they are on top of each other. Emotionally crushed. Demoralised. Anxious. Terrified. They can do nothing but accept their brutal fate. This is the nadir of animal cruelty in my book.

And, the international community entirely accepts it. The Vietnamese government accept it as normal. Nothing is done to stop it. It goes on year after year. The people who defend the cat meat business ask: what is difference between this and farming animals? 

This is not farming. There are no regulations in the cat meat businesses. Farmed livestock is slaughtered under regulated conditions. The objective is to slaughter the animals humanely so that they don't feel pain.

These cats are going to feel tremendous pain before they die. The whole process is essentially cruel. That is a big difference. And secondly, when we domesticated cats there was not an agreement that we could kill them brutally and eat them. 

The agreement was that we supported each other. That is how cat domestication came about in the first place. What we see here was not on the cards. This was not projected. It is a breach of that unwritten agreement by humans. It is foul animal abuse of the worst kind.

Tradition and culture

The underlying problem, as is the case in China, is that there is a culture of eating cat and dog meat in Vietnam. But that culture is based upon an ancient tradition going back perhaps one or 2000 years. It is bringing an ancient tradition into the modern world which does not work. This is because 1000 years ago people were less civilised and less educated about animal welfare. Traditional practices bring forward into the modern world animal cruelty.

Is there much worse than teaching kids to torment baby animals? Goat tying is cruel.

I am referring to that human entertainment - at the expense of animal welfare - called 'goat tying'. It is an acceptable form of animal abuse and has become normal. This is bad.

The tweet:

Is there much worse than teaching kids to torment baby animals? The goats used in #GoatTying are less than a year old & less than 60 pounds & can be tormented by up to 5 contestants in a row until they are switched out for another victim: https://bit.ly/43ftoXl

The accompanying picture disturbs

So, what is "goat tying"? Right away, to me, it sounds unpleasant at least. Let's remind ourselves that this is a form of human entertainment at the expense of goat welfare. Does that sound right to you?

Goat tying is a rodeo event. It's a sort of competition. The competitor rides to a tethered goat, dismounts, catches, throws and ties any three of its legs together. The goat stays tied for six seconds after the contestant has backed away. No score is awarded if the goat becomes untied before the six seconds has elapsed.

Goat tying is cruel. Image: MikeB

The competitor may be disqualified if they are too rough on the goat (so they are too rough on goats sometimes!). Goat tying is typically done by girls in high school and at college rodeos. And by both girls and boys a junior and youth rodeos.

My conclusion is that this human pastime teaches children animal cruelty. And if it doesn't teach them animal cruelty it teaches them that animals can be used and abused for their entertainment.

This is exactly the kind of thing that PETA detests. And it is the kind of thing that I detest as well. Our children are the future of animal welfare. We need to teach them the highest standards of animal welfare in order to make advancements in animal welfare across the world.

How are we going to achieve this if we teach kids the wrong things? Look at the picture. Does that goat look happy and contented? Or does he or she look abused, confused and anxious?

Goats are sentient creatures. They form relationships with people and other animals. They are sweet animals. They can become pets and often do. Goat tying is essentially cruel and abusive. It must stop.