The world's finest coffee, or at least the most expensive, is made from poo. Kopi luwak coffee is obtained from coffee berries that have been partially digested and defecated by a curious animal, the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus).

Despite the name, this is a civet, a small mammal belonging to the family Viverridae, similar to a mongoose. The confusion stems from a mistranslation: in English "civet" means "zibetto", but it was translated as "civetta" (the Italian word for owl). This animal, which lives in China, South-East Asia, Java, Sumatra and other Indonesian islands and in the Philippines, feeds among other things on coffee berries without, however, digesting them.

From these berries, collected from the animal's faeces, Kopi luwak coffee is obtained and sold for around 800 euros per kilogram, roughly 12 euros a cup. Initially, producers confined themselves to manually collecting the droppings of civets near coffee plantations, but once it became a profitable business, trouble began for these poor animals.

Today, civets are captured in the forest, locked in tiny cages and force-fed exclusively on coffee beans, which in nature make up a minimal part of their omnivorous diet. The animals are thus deprived of their freedom and natural spaces — deprivations that lead to illness, depression and neurotic behaviour, much as happens to moon bears on the horrifying bile farms.

Civets are typically exploited for three years and then released, but their condition is often severely compromised and many times they do not survive being set free. Beyond the terrible fate that befalls civets, a species already threatened by widespread deforestation, the quality of the coffee also deteriorates significantly.

In the wild, Asian palm civets practise a kind of selection of the beans, preferring the ripest fruit, which has the sweetest beans. This process obviously does not occur in captivity and the animals are fed beans at various stages of ripeness, to the detriment of the coffee's flavour.

It takes a strong stomach to drink a coffee obtained from excrement, but it takes an even stronger one to drink it knowing the horror that lies behind its production.