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PORTLAND, Ore. - This coffee can cost as much as $700 a pound and $80 a cup, and it is processed through the digestive system of a cat. It's said to be the most expensive coffee in the world and it was served up Friday at the International Coffee Expo in Northeast Portland. An Indonesian company brews it here as it is done in cafes in Jakarta.  "It is very delicious, very smooth and so luxurious," said Valerie Sindal, director of sales and marketing for ValBeMar Specialty Coffee. Coffee cherries are eaten by Civet cats, processed through their digestive...

Experts say that the coffee has a unique aroma Fears that Chinese civet cats may help to spread Sars have lead to thousands of the animals being slaughtered, but they do not seem to have affected demand for a rare coffee harvested with the animals' help in Indonesia. "Kopi Luwak" or " Civet Coffee" is made with beans that have been partially digested and then excreted by civets. The animals live in plantations and are apparently expert at picking out the finest coffee berries. Their digestive systems break down the fruit and then expel the beans. These are gathered by...

PARIS – The French actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, yesterday slammed Chinese President Hu Jintao for the drowning and incineration of thousands of civet cats over fears they carried a new strain of SARS. "The eradication methods these animals are put through are unacceptable, and they have easily and quickly been ideally targeted although no scientific research has yet identified which species is the first to have caught the virus," Bardot said in a letter to the president. Health authorities began culling caged civets in wild animal markets in Guangdong province Monday after China announced its first case...

Rats are next China's SARS hitlist January 07 2004 at 01:45PM Beijing - China's quest to stamp out Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has spread from the slaughter of civet cats to rats as the southern province of Guangdong ordered a large scale rat extermination campaign, state media said on Wednesday. Communist Party and government officials in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, have stipulated a city-wide effort to kill rats or mice between January 10 and 13, the Guangzhou Daily said. Residents are encouraged to set rat poison in their homes, block all channels of entry for the rodents, including drains...

<p>China on Monday confirmed its first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in July and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000 civet cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in the animals to the patient.</p>

China Orders Cats Killed After SARS Tests By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer BEIJING - China on Monday ordered some 10,000 civet cats in wildlife markets killed in its southern province of Guangdong after genetic tests suggested a link to a suspected SARS (news - web sites) case. Also Monday, authorities denied reports that a second suspected case of severe acute respiratory syndrome had been found in Guangdong. All of Guangdong's wildlife markets were ordered to close, Feng Liuxiang, deputy director of the province's health department, said on national television. Civets are considered a delicacy in Guangdong and are served...

Gene study narrows source of SARS 19:00 04 September 03 NewScientist.com news serviceThe SARS-like virus found in a food market in Guangdong, China jumped from animals to people - and not the other way around - suggests new research. The study represents an important step in tracing the original source of the virus. However, the work still leaves many important questions about the route of transmission of the SARS virus to people unanswered. In May, the researchers, led by Yi Guan at the University of Hong Kong, revealed initial results of tests on a SARS-like coronavirus isolated from market animals...

<p>MANILA &#8212; The SARS virus, which claimed more than 800 lives last spring and crippled economies from Hong Kong to Toronto, threatens to re-emerge when colder weather brings on the winter flu season, health officials in Asia are cautioning.</p> <p>"Right now, our thrust is on helping prepare vulnerable countries," said Dr. Elizabeth Miranda, a specialist in communicable diseases at the World Health Organization's regional office here.</p>

HONG KONG, Thursday, Aug. 14 - Chinese agriculture officials in Beijing have allowed farms to resume selling masked palm civets, a species that may have been the source of the SARS virus, and 53 other exotic species, although Chinese provinces retain the discretion to bar human consumption of these animals. Following complaints from farmers and animal dealers, the State Forestry Administration issued a circular earlier this week allowing the sale of farm-raised animals from the 54 species, while maintaining a ban on the sale of animals caught in the wild, saying they might not be free of viruses. The circular...

Aids, the Ebola Virus, monkey-pox, and SARS are all diseases that probably started in wild animals and switched to humans.It now appears likely that the recent outbreak of SARS got its start from the close contact between Chinese animal merchants and their wares.The people of Guangdong Profince in southern China are famous for eating "everything with four legs except a table, everything that flies except an airplane, and everything that swims except a submarine," and support a brisk trade in cats, snakes, bats, dogs, civet cats, pangolins, and anything else hunters can get their hands on.People like the taste, but...

<p>July 17 (Bloomberg) -- The virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, a disease that killed more than 800 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide, may return in this year's flu season, according to new survey.</p> <p>Among the nine public health experts surveyed by the London- based Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, three said SARS may recur, two said SARS would not recur, and four were uncertain, according to an e-mailed statement from the British Medical Association.</p>

SARS puts Chinese off wildlife dinners Government bans eating of exotic animals discovered to carry virus By Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press GUANGZHOU, China -- The civet cats are gone from their cages at the market, replaced by ducks and rabbits. The snakes, bats, badgers and anteaterlike pangolins are missing, too. For years, the hundreds of stalls at the Chatou Wild Animal Food Market in China's southern business capital of Guangzhou were a snapping, hissing zoo of exotic, endangered wildlife destined for the plates of the most adventurous diners. Then came SARS and the discovery that civets and some other small...

CHINESE authorities have identified the patient who started the Sars epidemic that has killed at least 770 people around the world. Huang Xingchu, 36, a cook who prepared wild animal dishes in a restaurant in Shenzhen on the Hong Kong border, survived the infection, but now lives in hiding for fear of retribution. Medical experts believe that the Sars virus was passed from the civet cat, a favourite on menus around Hong Kong, to human beings. A restaurant kitchen or livestock market are the most likely places where this happened. The infected cook lost his job and many friends because...

Some early lessons and legacies of SARS THESE days, any international meeting on health is sure to have Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) high on the agenda. And the annual gathering of the World Health Organisation (WHO), held in Geneva from May 19th-28th, was no exception. Representatives of 192 countries recognised SARS as the first grave infectious disease to emerge in the 21st century. They also noted that lessons learned in the response to the disease, such as the need for prompt and transparent reporting, would be relevant to the next new disease, as well as to possible acts of...

Virus detectives seek source of SARS in China's wild animals Researchers investigating the source of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have turned their attention to the wild-animal markets of southern China. The move follows reports that workers and animals at the markets show high rates of infection with coronaviruses, the family to which the virus believed to cause SARS belongs. The possible link to wild animals emerged on 23 May 2003, when a team from the University of Hong Kong revealed that a coronavirus resembling the SARS virus had been isolated from 6 masked palm civets (_Paguma larvata_) and a...

<p>Chinese officials have seized more than 10,000 wild animals in raids on food markets and ports of entry in an effort to stop transmission of SARS, Agence France-Presse said, citing police and official media.</p> <p>The virus has been found in civets, badgers and raccoon dogs, according to researchers. These animals have all been seized, along with thousands of other mammals, birds and snakes, AFP said, citing China's official Xinhua News Agency.</p>

Researchers in southern China who traced the virus that causes SARS to the endangered civet cat, said SARS anti-bodies have been found in traders of wild animals who did not develop the symptoms of the disease, according to press reports seen yesterday. Researchers found SARS anti-bodies in five traders of wild animals, but none of them developed any symptoms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), He Yaqing, deputy director of the Shenzhen Centre for Disease Control, told Saturday's Yangcheng Evening News. The findings suggest that the form of the coronavirus that is suspected to have jumped from either the civet...

ONG KONG, May 23 — A virus virtually identical to the one thought to cause SARS in humans has been found in a tree-dwelling animal whose meat is a delicacy in southern China and in two other species, scientists here and at the World Health Organization said today.The evidence reported today solves one scientific mystery because it is the first to show that the SARS virus exists outside humans, raising the possibility that it jumped from animals to humans.The new findings could greatly increase the difficulty of containing SARS in humans because if certain species of wild animals harbor the...

A Hong Kong researcher says a wild animal considered a dining delicacy is the carrier of a virus that causes SARS. The finding fits earlier speculation that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome originated in wild animals. Hong Kong University revealed Friday that the civet cat, a wild animal indigenous to southern China, is the likely source of the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Dr. K.Y. Yuen said researchers at the Shenzhen Center of Disease Control found four strains of the virus in a large percentage of civet cats. "From a special type of civet cat, we are able...