Ladydrawers: Hog Brains and a Mysterious Illness Linked to Bacon Processing

Part of the Series

Ladydrawers

2016 0112ld fb In Ladydrawers’ latest strip in the “Growing Season” comics exploration of public health, race and food policy, Laura Ķeniņš and Anne Elizabeth Moore explore how the production of certain popular meat products is linked to corporate malfeasance, public health risks and profound, citywide racism – not to mention all the weird additives. For workers and eaters alike, the world of meat processing is packed with dangers.

Ladydrawers

Footnotes

1. “Baby Names,” Baby Center. https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names-bacon-579925.htm (accessed December 1, 2015)

2. “Media Advisory: GAP Whistleblowers Available to Speak on Food Safety Concerns at Largest Hormel Pork Plant,” Government Accountability Project press release, November 11, 2015.

3. Denise Grady, “A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota,” The New York Times (February 5, 2008). https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html?pagewanted=all (accessed December 1, 2015)

4. Ibid.

5. The US Census data for 2010 lists Austin, Minnesota, as 86.8 percent white and 15.4 percent Hispanic or Latino, with a population of 12,718. Compare this to the 4,869,291 hogs slaughtered at the facility per year: That’s about 383 swine per person. See https://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/27/2702908.html and https://wtfhormel.com/#take_action for figures.

6. Tom Philpott, “Everything You Didn’t Want to Know About Hormel, Bacon, and Amputated Limbs,” Mother Jones (October 15, 2014). https://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/10/chain-ted-genoways-spam-hormel (accessed December 2, 2015). See also: https://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?id=67 for disturbing historical accounts of white supremacist violence in Austin.

7. “Hormel Foods,” OpenSecrets.org. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000026518&year=2015 (accessed December 2, 2015).

8. Philpott (Ibid).

9. “Media Advisory” (Ibid).

Laura Ķeniņš

Laura Ķeniņš is an artist, writer and editor who lives in Halifax, Canada, and Riga, Latvia. Her comics have been published in kuš! Comics, Darling Sleeper, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Coast and others, and exhibited internationally. She is currently working on a book about women and saunas.

Anne Elizabeth Moore

Anne Elizabeth Moore is a cultural critic and author of several award-winning, best-selling nonfiction books including Unmarketable (The New Press) and Cambodian Grrrl (Cantankerous Titles). She is a Fulbright scholar, a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow, and is the recipient of a 2016 Write A House Fellowship in Detroit. Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Al Jazeera, Salon, The Onion, Talking Points Memo, Wilson Quarterly, Tin House, and in international art exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial and a solo show at the MCA Chicago. She has appeared on CNN, NPR, Voice of America, and in The New York Times, among others. Her most recent book, from Curbside Splendor, is Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes.