Expensive coffee equals cruelty to civets

[Catherine]

Civets are a medium sized mammal that lives in the forests of Indonesia. They eat some coffee beans as part of their diet. They don't really digest them, so some humans got the idea of taking the beans from their poop and making coffee out of it. The coffee sells for as much as $100.00 a cup.  This has led to Civet plantations where the animals are kept in terrible, unsuitable conditions where they are fed many more coffee beans than they would choose to eat.
So for the sake of an expensive cup of coffee many animals live retched lives and die of stress. 

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0

First let me say that this is real. People will actually pay a large amount of money for coffee made from beans that an animal has pooped out. Do you ever wonder who was the first person to fish a coffee bean from poop and actually eat it. They say it tastes very good, but there are limits to what I would do for a good cup of coffee.

I am not surprized that the result is cruel plantations. That seems to be what we do. We get an idea that we want to eat something and nothing is too weird or too cruel to be eaten and nothing is too weird or too cruel to stop our trying to get it.
(talk about an eating disorder)