Faqs

Q. I know that glycerin can come from animal fat. If so, is there a problem of basar b'chalav to use milk and honey hand soap which contains both glycerin and milk in the ingredients?


A. If meat and milk are cooked together, they create basar b'chalav which one may not (eat or) even have pleasure from. Accordingly, if animal-based glycerin is cooked with milk one would be forbidden to have any benefit from the resulting mixture. However, one is only forbidden from having benefit (hana'ah) from meat and milk which are cooked together, and the typical method of producing hand soap would be to just blend the glycerin and milk ingredients without any cooking. Accordingly, one would be permitted to derive benefit from that hand soap even if it contains both meat and milk.

Other factors to consider in this case are that (a) the glycerin may be from pig fat or vegetable oil, both of which would not create basar b'chalav (and only beef-based glycerin would raise a concern because beef is from an inherently kosher animal), and (b) there is likely a very small amount of milk in the soap such that the milk is batel b'shishim (less than 1/60 of the mixture) and does not give the status of basar b'chalav to the mixture.

Based on the above, it is permitted to use the hand soap.