AGRICULTURAL COOPERATION IN DENMARK. 
35 
gree of success equal to that of the cooperative bacon factories (co- 
operative hog-slaughtering and bacon-curing plants) in Denmark. 
In some European countries the consumers have attempted to own 
and operate slaughter plants on a cooperative basis, whereas the 
Danish slaughtering enterprises are all controlled by producers. The 
Danish plants restrict their operations mainly to slaughtering hogs 
and curing bacon and slaughter only a small number of other kinds 
of livestock, chiefly for making sausage. In Norway, where 25 
per cent of the livestock is slaughtered in seven cooperative plants 
owned by the farmers, these plants are built to supply a home market 
and to slaughter all kinds of livestock. 
In Denmark the slaughtering industry is not centralized at the 
large markets as in the United States. The bacon factories are 
equally distributed more or less locally throughout the entire King- 
dom (fig. 12). Each plant draws its supply of hogs from a limited 
Fig. 12. — Cooperative hog-slaughtering and bacon-curing plant at Kjoge. There are 46 
cooperative plants operating in different sections of Denmark. 
territory. The average membership belonging to each cooperative 
bacon factory association is about 3,600 hog producers. 
Cooperative bacon factories were built in different sections of the 
country to meet a market demand which came with the new system 
of agriculture. With the rapid development of the new dairy in- 
dustry in the eighties large quantities of skim milk were returned 
to the farm and were utilized for feeding pigs. Although a few 
private bacon plants had already been erected, many sections of the 
country did not have available facilities for slaughtering. Con- 
sequently, it may not be said that this cooperative movement al- 
together replaced a former system of slaughterhouses already estab- 
lished. At this early date, the shipping of hogs to the few private 
plants was not satisfactory, because of the transportation problem 
and because of the wide margin asked by local hog buyers. More- 
over, the private bacon plants experienced great difficulty in getting 
a sufficient number of hogs of the bacon type. 
Whether a bacon factory was cooperative or not, the first and 
outstanding element of success was to secure a regular supply of 
