Danish Co-operative Bacon-curing Industry. 245 



The largest number of pigs are delivered to the factory 

 in the summer, and the manager, in order to find suitable 

 employment for his workmen during the rather slack months of 

 the spring, has induced his committee to add the packing and 

 preservation of eggs to their business. The farms in the 

 Kalundborg district keep on an average from twelve to fifteen 

 cows, and, generally speaking, as many pigs are supplied to 

 the factory as there are milch cows kept on the farm. The 

 greatest distance from which pigs are supplied is about 16 miles, 

 and from districts convenient to the railway line the animals are 

 sent in by rail. The society has provided itself with railway 

 trucks for its dead meat traffic. The buildings and machinery 

 of the factory cost in round figures £6,000, and a further over- 

 draft of £2,000 was necessary as working capital for the pur- 

 poses of the society's business. The society employs twenty 

 workmen, only one of whom may be described as a skilled 

 operative, namely, the foreman butcher, whose wages are 2,000 

 kroner, or £112, per annum. The other hands are paid at the 

 rate of from 20 kroner (22s.) weekly, or less. In this factory, 

 as in all others, a live-weight scale is provided, so that farmers 

 may satisfy themselves, if they so desire, of the actual live 

 weight of their pigs at the moment of delivery, but such is 

 the confidence of the members that the live weight scale is 

 very seldom used. In most Danish co-operative bacon fac- 

 tories, the loss in killing, or the reduction from live to dead 

 weight, averages 25 per cent, while the difference between dead 

 weight and cured weight is usually 25 Danish lb., or 28 lb. 

 English. Pigs are killed twice weekly, namely, Tuesdays and 

 Fridays. 



A description is given in the report of the various depart- 

 ments of a bacon factory, and the processes employed from the 

 reception of the pig to the despatch of the train to market are 

 described. 



Every part of the animal is converted into some form of sale- 

 able commodity — -blood, bristles, bones, and entrails being all 

 utilised and afterwards disposed of as by-products of the 

 business. 



The following particulars of expenses (wages and insurances) 

 at Kalundborg are quoted as a fair example of those prevailing 



