Originally published at: Woman makes breast milk soap and customers love it | Boing Boing
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Well, all milk** is breast milk. Is there a reason why soap made with human milk is any better for eczema, etc. than soap made with cow, sheep, goat or any other mammalian milk?
** Yes - milk - not vegetable substitutes hijacking that word.
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The fat and sugar content depends a great deal on the mammal. Why do we distinguish cow, sheep, and goat cheese? I don’t know which would make the best soap though.
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Not quite. You won’t find any teats on a platypus.
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This was literally a joke in a sitcom recently. Was it Schitt’s Creek? I can’t find a reference to it now. One of the locals was making breast milk soap but could never sell it for the obvious reason that everyone thought it was disgusting. It was a funny joke because of how obviously ludicrous it was.
Well, here we are in the Ludicrous Timeline for so many reasons, I guess.
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Came here to get the recipe for customer-loving Breast Milk Soup, but leaving disappointed…
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I thought we were calling that milk just to be polite.
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Wrong way to extract soap fixin’s out of a platypus:
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Ummm
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I’m not sure the FDA would agree 
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A good riposte. 
But the pedant in me demands to say that it is not milk, though. From the article:
This species is unique because it gives birth to live offspring. Members make "milk” in the form of protein crystals to serve as food for their developing young
That’s “milk” in inverted commas.
harvesting this milk-like substance is currently a labor-intensive process.
… milk-like
harvesting the crystals from its midgut
Not a breast or udder or teat or any other term or euphemism… but from its gut. (Which is not “lactating” as the article refers to it.)
Also, the whole article had a powerful whiff of ChatGPT. Which is not to say it is wrong, but the style was … off.
This human would have taken care not to talk about cockroach “milk” being lactose free, detailing how the substance is harvested from the gut of necessarily dead cockroaches, having also talked about needing to kill the cockroach, and embryos, when it begins “lactating”.
I feel a discussion of the etymology and use of “lact-” coming on but that would be a derail too far. 
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I’m interested in the feelings that we have when something like soap is made from a living human, a woman.
Have been to a cafe where a breast milk coffee was offered to those in the know and not to the general public. Talked abut the situation with folk and there was a big “ewww” digust response.
Not sure how I feel about this coffee. First reaction was a big NO but then thought about why?
I know a farmer who’s business and life is around raising cattle and selling them to be slaughtered for beef but couldn’t face changing up to dairy production because he couldn’t stand the screaming of the calf’s and cows being separated from each other so the cows could be milk producers. Cows are milked twice a day or they suffer pain.
There is a movement toward happy cow milk where the calf’s aren’t killed because the veal market is low.
Not sure about women’s milk as a commodity.
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It’s an interesting question. And I think everyone has different responses.
Consider:
Do you think blood donations are gross?
Are wigs made for cancer survivors from human hair gross?
What if those wigs are for non-cancer survivors?
Is the traditional practice of using a wet nurse gross (if the birth mom can’t nurse)?
If I use my kid’s baby teeth to make a mosaic, is that gross?
What about fingernail clippings?
It helps one dial into where the ick factor is coming from.
And you hit on something with the “commodity” line. For me, at least, that’s a line where I get kind of wary.
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