For only $200 a cup, you’ll soon be able to buy tea grown in panda dung

Tea drinkers finally have a drink as off-putting as kopi luwak to call their own. Reuters reports that An Yanshi, a businessman in southwest China, is growing green tea “using tonnes of excrement from pandas living at nearby breeding centres”—and he’s going to sell it for over $200 a cup. An says the secret to his tea is in the panda’s somewhat inefficient digestive process: “They absorb less than 30 per cent of the nutrition from the food, and that means more than 70 per cent of the nutrients are passed out in their feces.” In other words, tea grown in panda-feces fertilizer should contain all sorts of health benefits passed on by the pandas. Unfortunately for An, not everyone believes the hype. Though An dressed up in a panda suit to promote his tea (see the photo on the Star website), one of his initial tasters was less than impressed. Still, if the Toronto Zoo is looking for new and disgusting sources of revenue, perhaps it should consider putting the dung from those fancy pandas to good use. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »

(Images: panda, Kevin Dooley; teapot, Jeremy Keith)