Is Gelatin Halal? Here's Why Gelatin May Not be Halal

Gelatin is a magical substance made from the excessive boiling of skin, bones, ligaments, and tendons, of animals, primarily pigs and cows.

After boiling the animal’s residue, it is dried to form a powder. This powder is used in various food products without our actual knowledge.

In order to make the gelatin, it is required to perform partial hydrolysis of the collagen in animals. In this process, peptide bonds in protein or broken down.

Gelatin is used in products such as Jell-O, Shampoos, face-masks, Cosmetics, candies, marshmallows, cakes, ice creams, yogurts, Photographic films and even in the protein films of vitamin capsules.

Gelatin is used for thickening products so that they are compact like pudding. Gelatin is also used and bought separately at the store in the form of a powder or jelly film.

It is dissolved in warm water and poured into various deserts for thickening then. These include cheesecakes, jellies, puddings, et cetera.

The reason why gelatin may not be halal is that it uses pigs parts during the preparation. Even if the gelatin used in various products is made from cow meat or cow parts, it is still not confirmed that a cow is being used for the gelatin.

When a person goes to the grocery store and picks up a packet of marshmallows or Jell-O, the nutrition label will give the ingredients as “gelatin“; it does not specify which animal the gelatin was extracted from.

Muslims are forbidden from consuming anything with pigs in it. This is why gelatin may be haram for the Muslims, as do the many other products with gelatin in them.

The problem arises because the description labels on different products don’t specify which animal the gelatin was extracted from.

This is why Muslims may not consume the product as a whole. This means that Muslims may be deprived of various jellies and bakery products that contain gelatin.

If the gelatin is bought from only an Islamic store and is certified halal, that means that even the products with gelatin that are made in Muslim countries are halal.

This is because, obviously, they would not use pigs for making their gelatin.