The answer is quite simply a big fat no then.
Vegan has a clear meaning, and it isn’t just limited to parts of the diet.
For something to be vegan, it has to be completely free of any and all animal products, whether it’s food, shampoo, soap, or sometimes even fabrics.
Let’s look further into this.
What does vegan mean?
Let’s first try and define the term ‘vegan’.
What exactly does it mean?
It can be a bit more up for debate than something like vegetarian.
Some may disagree about what exactly is and is not vegan.
That said, we can define vegan in fairly simple terms.
Vegan to describe a person would mean someone who doesn’t consume or use anything containing animal products.
Equally, to describe a product, we can say that vegan means no animal products were used in its production.
The most obvious things that vegans omit from their diets are eggs and dairy products, which vegetarians would still eat.
The other important point to make, as I mentioned, is the fact that vegans don’t just omit these items from their diet.
They also won’t use them at all, whether it’s a hair product, cleaning product—anything.
So, with this in mind, can we consider goat milk soap to be vegan?
Is goat milk soap considered vegan?
No, it isn’t.
Anything that uses milk from an animal is not vegan.
Goat milk soap is made, primarily, using goat milk, just as the name implies.
Even though a vegan wouldn’t be eating the soap, they would object to its having been made at all.
If any part of the process of making it involves an animal being raised in captivity, then it is not vegan.
Though some may disagree about individual products—some vegans, for example, are comfortable eating honey where others are not—milk is one area where pretty much everyone agrees.
Milk, used for food or in a product, is not vegan.
The other term you hear thrown around quite a lot is ‘cruelty-free’—does goat milk soap qualify on this front?
Is goat milk soap cruelty-free?
Cruelty-free may sound like an even more ambiguous term than vegan.
This would be the case were it simply a moniker that manufacturers could use without accreditation.
In fact, for something to be considered cruelty-free, it normally has to go through an evaluative process.
If there are no animals involved in the testing of their products, then they can be separately accredited by an independent body, and assigned the cruelty-free logo.
So, whether or not goat milk soap is cruelty-free will depend on the manufacturer.
It would be considered cruel to the animals it had been tested on, rather than the goat that had been milked.
What is goat milk soap actually made of, then?
What is goat milk soap made of?
It might sound like a silly question—the clue is right there in the name.
But you obviously cannot get soap purely from goat milk.
Soaps are usually made from animal fats, but milk replaces the need for this.
Mostly it actually is just goat milk, although there are things like colorings, scents, etc.
Most are chemicals whose names you might struggle to read.
So, it is mostly made of milk, rich in fatty acids.
Milk is the main ingredient.
What is considered a vegan soap?
Nowadays, most soaps are no longer made of animal fats.
There are still many such soaps, but they are in the minority now.
With that in mind, then, most soaps do tend to be vegan, unless they explicitly contain an animal product.
Most brands of soap, then, are vegan, and most generic soaps you would find at your local store are going to be vegan.
Artisanal soaps from independent stores and things like that are more likely to use animal fat unless stated otherwise.
There are lots and lots of brands of soap in lots of different places around the world, so it wouldn’t really be useful to list them all.
Look for animal products on the list of ingredients.
So, while there may be some disagreement about what exactly a vegan should or shouldn’t use, we can likely all agree that anything made using goat milk is not going to be vegan.
Soaps can be a bit of a problem for vegans because they so often use animal products without making it very obvious.
Even non-vegans might tend to assume most soap is vegan.
However, there should be no doubt in your mind if you’re looking at a soap made from any kind of milk that it is not vegan.