46 CO-OPEEATION IN DANISH AGRICULTURE 



trade and industry in many directions. The building and 

 allied trades have found occupation in building, extending, and 

 rebuilding both dairies and farm buildings for the increased 

 stock, and engineering and machine trades in manufacturing 

 separators, pasteurisers, coolers, churns, milk cans, balances^>^^ 

 etc, ; a large demand for be^chwood for staves for butter casks ' 

 has benefited owners of beech forests and the timber and 

 coopering trades, and so forth. The large import of feeding 

 stuffs for the increased stock, of salt, soda and oil for the dairies, 

 and the large export of butter have benefited not only mer- ' 

 chants but also the shipping trade. 



Compared with all these advantages there have been very 

 few drawbacks. During the first years, no doubt, many 

 farmers forced the milk production beyond what was economical, 

 and spent more on feeding stuffs than the cows could return in 

 milk. There has been, and to some extent there still is, some 

 difficulty for the people, living in the country and not keeping 

 cows, to get milk, particularly whole milk, as this is almost 

 totally absorbed by the co-operative dairies. This has affected 

 the poor people and the labourers, who in former times often 

 received milk as a gift in addition to their wages. 



But the principal objection to the co-operative dairy system 

 was the mixing of milk from many herds, not because of its 

 effect on the butter, but because of the return to the farmers, 

 as food for their calves and pigs, of mixed milk derived from 

 many herds of which some in all probability contained cows 

 giving tuberculous milk. This system, unavoidable if co-opera- 

 tive dairies were to remain, contained undoubtedly a grave 

 danger, but this has been happily obviated, thanks in the first 

 instance to the exertions of the great veterinary authority, Dr. 

 B. Bang, to whose distinguished research work and untiring 

 energy in combating tuberculosis we owe so much of our 

 present knowledge of that disease. It is doubtful, however, 

 if even he would have been able to effect the required reform, 

 were it not for a most fortunate concurrence of developments 

 seemingly with no interconnection. i 



In a remarkably short time a new system of treating cream 



' Harald Fabcr, "Compulsory Pasteurisation of Milk in Danish T>«irics as 

 a Precaution against Tuberculosis," Public Health, January, 1901, 



