History
The history of Tican stretches back to 1928. In the nineteenth century, all pigs were slaughtered on the farm and sold on the home market. As enterprising businessmen began exporting Danish pigmeat to the UK and Germany, it became necessary for farmers to have their animals slaughtered at local slaughterhouses.
Denmark's first cooperative slaughterhouse was established in Horsens in 1887, and by around 1930 there were no fewer than 60 cooperative slaughterhouses in the country. In 1928, farmers in Han Herred in the north of Jutland made plans to set up their own slaughterhouse in order to avoid having to transport their animals to Nørresundby, Skive or Struer, which, at that time, were the nearest slaughterhouses. Both the Thisted Cooperative Slaughterhouse and the Fjerritslev Cooperative Slaughterhouse opened in January and February of 1931, and they remained independent right up until 1978, when they agreed to merge.
In the intervening years, the industry's numerous mergers and the industrialisation of agriculture had led to a substantial reduction in the number of co-operative slaughterhouses. Today, there are only two slaughterhouses remaining in Denmark - Danish Crown and Tican.
