— opinion —
My father is a coffee enthusiast.
For his birthday, I wanted to find him something he’s never tried before. So I started searching specialty coffee websites to find special gifts.
Then I found it. Coffee made from animal waste.
Of course I bought it right away.
The coffee was Kopi Luwak, a famous Indonesian beer made from beans eaten, digested and excreted by Asian civet cats. It seemed like nonsense. It sounded disgusting. It was also exactly what my dad wanted to try.
But as a writer food safety newsAnother question soon followed.
Did I just buy my father something dangerous?
I didn’t know, so I started digging into the science.
While searching for coffee, I came across a scene from a 2007 movie. bucket list. In the movie, Jack Nicholson’s character proudly drinks his favorite expensive coffee while Morgan Freeman’s character reveals where it came from: beans that passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat. Nicholson’s horrified reaction gets some laughs, but it also illustrates why foods like kopi luwak fascinate people. They challenge our instincts about what is edible and what is safe.
This is where food safety gets interesting.
The world’s most famous poop coffee
Kopi Luwak is often sold as one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with some varieties selling for hundreds of dollars per pound.
This process begins when civets eat ripe coffee cherries. As the fruit passes through the animal’s digestive system, enzymes and microorganisms alter the beans, breaking down proteins associated with bitterness and altering flavor compounds. After the beans are excreted, producers collect, wash, dry and roast them.
At first glance, this process sounds like a recipe for contamination.
However, scientific studies have shown that properly processed kopi luwak is not inherently dangerous. Studies of commercially prepared beans have shown very low levels of pathogenic bacteria after washing and roasting. Animal waste can certainly contain harmful microorganisms, but processing steps significantly reduce this risk.
The beans are washed, dried and roasted at temperatures that destroy most bacteria. From a food safety perspective, the roasting process serves as a slaughtering step, as does meat cooking or milk pasteurization. The result is a product that sounds alarming, but carries risks similar to many other specialty coffees.
In other words, the fact that soybeans have passed through an animal’s digestive tract does not automatically make them dangerous.
This distinction is important because food safety is not determined by what looks disgusting. This will depend on risks, controls and handling.
Elephant Coffee follows a similar path
A related product, Thai Black Ivory Coffee, uses elephants instead of civet cats.
Elephants consume Arabica coffee cherries and later retrieve the beans in their dung. During digestion, microorganisms and enzymes change the bean’s chemistry, producing coffee known for its mild taste and low bitterness.
The same food safety principles apply. The beans are thoroughly cleaned, processed and roasted before consumption. Studies have shown that the digestion process contributes to flavor development, while proper post-harvest handling minimizes microbial risks.
The result is another product that, as strange as it sounds, generally poses few documented food safety risks when produced correctly.
I briefly considered getting my father some too. Then I saw the price. At over $1,000 per kilogram, we decided that one animal-digested coffee experiment would be enough for just one birthday.
Then there’s maggot cheese.
If poop coffee sounds strange, Casu Marzu from Sardinia may be harder for many consumers to digest.
Traditional sheep milk cheeses are intentionally populated with cheese fly larvae. Phyophila of the house. As they feed, the maggots break down fats and proteins, turning cheese into an exceptionally soft and spicy product.
The sight of live caterpillars wriggling through cheese is enough to make many people give up dairy products forever.
Shit coffee was one thing. Maggot Cheese was where I found my personal line.
But unlike Kopi Luwak, Casu Marzu has legitimate safety concerns.
The larvae could theoretically survive passage through the stomach and cause a rare condition called pseudomyosis. Unregulated production may also increase the risk of bacterial contamination. Although commercial sale is prohibited in Italy, the cheese continues to be consumed informally and remains an important part of Sardinian food culture.
Nonetheless, the product’s reputation as “the world’s most dangerous cheese” often exceeds the available evidence. Serious illnesses associated with traditional Casu Marzu are rare.
When dangerous food becomes safe
Many traditional foods rely on processes that may seem counterintuitive at first.
Surströmming in Sweden uses fermentation to preserve herring.
Iceland’s Hákarl is made from Greenland shark, which undergoes months of curing and fermentation to make it edible.
Japanese puffer fish contains tetrodotoxin, one of the most powerful natural toxins known, yet is safely prepared daily by qualified chefs.
In each case, careful processing transforms a potentially hazardous product into a product that is safe for consumption.
The principles are the same as those underlying modern food safety systems. That is, identifying and controlling hazards.
Severe is not dangerous
One of the most persistent misconceptions about food safety is that disgust and risk are the same thing.
I understand instincts. My first reaction to poop coffee wasn’t curiosity. “Absolutely not.” I knew my father would feel differently.
But disgust and danger are not the same thing.
Many foods that people find unpleasant have relatively low risk when produced properly. Fermentation, microbial activity, and even digestion can help transform food and control risk. Meanwhile, some seemingly ordinary foods can cause serious illness.
Salad in a bag contaminated with E. coli appears no different from being safe. A jar of peanut butter contaminated with salmonella appears completely normal. Raw milk may seem cleaner than some drinking water, but it poses a much greater microbial risk.
The lesson of Poop Coffee and Maggot Cheese is not that everything weird is safe. Our instincts are often poor at assessing real danger.
Food safety is not determined by what disgusts us. It is determined by science.
So how was the coffee?
My father loved it.
When asked for a review, he didn’t hesitate.
“One of the smoothest coffees I’ve ever had. It has a very pleasant earthy tone. The elements are more complex but not overpowering. It feels very balanced and even. It’s a great coffee to sip. It sits right on the back of the tongue. It reminds me a bit of Turkish coffee. It’s a great drinking coffee.”
He finished the bag long before I finished my research.
Sometimes “gross” is just disgusting.
