Demand for luxury wild meat and civet coffee has driven the establishment of civet farms in South-east Asia, including in Vietnam. However, little is known about the impacts of these farms on wild civet populations. In 2020, semi-structured interviews were used to explore the status and trade dynamics of 57 commercial civet farms in Lam Dong and Dak Lak provinces, Vietnam. Interviewees comprised civet farm owners as well as local government staff that were mandated to monitor these facilities. The results show that the surveyed civet farms are poorly managed by the authorities in these two provinces and that these operations pose a high level of risk to both wild civet populations and to public health. 64% of interviewed farms reported that they restocked using wild-caught civets and 63% reported disease as a cause of captive mortality, and in one instance a farm reported ~ 200 individuals died at once. A fifth of the farms interviewed kept more civets than registered with the government. High mortality and low breeding success rates were reported by 74% owners; this probably explains some of the reported dependency on using wild-caught civets for restocking. Civet farms in these two provinces are an ongoing threat to wild civet populations and also to public health; farms may currently be beyond regulatory control, and the commercial farming of civets for their meat and for civet coffee should be phased out both as a conservation and pandemic prevention mechanism.