Caged civet coffee banned by UTZ Certified
News
A global coffee certification body has stopped certifying coffee from caged civets.
UTZ Certified, the leading label for sustainable coffee production, will no longer certify producers that use caged civets and other animals to produce coffee.
This marks a major success in our civet coffee campaign, which we launched in September 2013, following a BBC investigation into civet coffee production in Indonesia.
We've been working with UTZ Certified and other certification bodies to explore how certified coffee producers can avoid involvement with caged civet coffee production.
The UTZ Code of Conduct will be open for public consultation in Indonesia later this year to help understand the implications it will have for the already-certified UTZ farmers who produce animal coffee as a side activity.
Martin Cooke, International Head of Corporate Engagement at World Animal Protection, said: “We applaud UTZ Certified for recognizing that capturing animals from the wild and keeping them in cramped cages, just to create a novelty ‘luxury’ drink, simply must stop. We now want other certification standards to follow UTZ’s lead and to take a zero tolerance position on caged production methods.
“We want a certification scheme for wild, cage-free civet coffee, so that both retailers and consumers can easily recognize genuine, wild-sourced, animal friendly products.”