THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Many people in this country enjoy riding motorcycles. Probably just as many enjoy bacon. And some enterprising people at the Hormel Corp. have found a way to meld the two in a mutually advantageous union.

Hormel Foods Corporation, a company that has been making bacon for over 100 years, has now made the world’s first motorcycle fueled by bacon grease.

The Austin-based company has created a new marketing campaign in time for the International Bacon Film Festival in San Diego, California, which takes place August 29.

A team of 12 traveled with rider Eric Pierson, a Minneapolis actor. They filmed the journey for the film, “Driven By Bacon,” which will be shown at the film festival this year.Hormel and marketing firm BBDO Minneapolis sponsored a motorcycle that runs on organic biodiesel made of refined bacon grease, which traveled from Austin to California this month.

The “Driven By Bacon” team worked with Bio-Blend Fuels in Manitowoc, Wisconsin to refine bacon grease into 100 percent biodiesel, an environmentally-safer alternative to conventional diesel fuel.

Bio-Blend turned about 275 gallons of bacon grease into 250 gallons of B100 bacon biodiesel for the project.

Sadly, in January 2014 Bio-Blend Fuels, a small boutique biodiesel plant, permanently shut down all fuel production, citing uncertainty over the U.S. governments Renewable Fuel Standard requirements for 2014.

“Changes in industry regulations have made it increasingly more difficult for a small plant to compete with large scale commercial plants,” said owners Dan and Tracy Kaderabek.

But the bacon biodiesel they made for the “Driven By Bacon” campaign is nearly carbon-neutral, contributing almost no emissions to global warming.

And the exhaust emission smells like bacon!

During WWII civilians were encouraged to save their bacon grease for the glycerin in it that could be used for manufacturing explosives. Will we see a ressurrection of that call to power our local biker clubs?