Quality Control; Small vs. Large Companies

. In general, large companies care less about quality (by quality, I mean how well their products are manufactored, how sound their food is). A lot of big companies cut corners. [opinion] Purina, Iams, and Kibbles 'n Bits have the ability to make a SUPERB food. Do they? No, they spit out mediocre to poor quality food and market it as if its the best thing since sliced bread.

 
 It's true that the smaller companies use better ingredients but they don't have several nutritionists on their staff and years of research. This is a quote from another thread from papillon, a graduate student studying animal nutrition;
 
" However, I do think that because the big companies have so many nutritionists (ppl that I have studied with--lots went to Hills and Purina), they are more able to manipulate ingredients to suit the dogs needs.  For example, when you know so much about nutrition and the components of ingredients, it is easy to find a cheaper substitute proven to do the same as it's more expensive alternative ."
 
  apillon is part of a group of graduate students analyzing the nutritional balance of foods made by several holistic companies and they have found that some of them haven't taken into account the interaction of the nutritional components of ingredients used in their formulas; they have found excesses of certain nutrients which effect the balance of the food. Large companies have the ability to use cheaper ingredients to achieve the correct nutritional balance, and if the nutrients in a food aren't carefully balanced it may do more harm than good.
 
 

 

Employees are personally involved with pets.  Most days there are several pets in the office.  Our people show, field trial and breed.  We support area humane and no-kill facilities.  We do not do any testing on laboratory or caged animals, nor do we have a kennel facility.  Food related palatability trials are done with breeders or as in-home trials.

 
This came off of Eagles website.  Maybe this isn't QC, but maybe it really is.  Can the larger companies say this? The kind of QC where people take a personal interst to me is the best QC.  
I worked in an embroidery shop for years,,its very small.  Our joke has been to look at all the embroidery on the market,,, unbelievable bad stitches and just all around mess...most of it we would not have left out of door,,and yet its in large department stores selling for lots of money.  If we were to sell half of it to our customers they would  not have come back to order more things,,,, and we would no longer exist. 
I do know that over the years, I have had many things that didn't belong in boxes of things that I have purchased in human food,,, such as cereal boxes, canned food, and I'll never forget the wad of hair in my all time favorite Cheese-It box!!!

I agree with Dyan.  I don't think, though, it's so much a matter of "better" quality control, as "different style" quality control.  I'm more comfortable with a style similiar to what Dyan describes, because it meshes well with my own hands on approach.  Others may feel comfort in numbers, multiplicity of failsafes, and heirarchical oversight procedures.  It's all OK, to me, really.  [sm=wink2.gif]

I would think they about equal out.. with small companies producing much less therefore having much less opportunity for incident, and larger co.s producing a ton aving a much higher proabability. 

Then again... to be honest neither should have a problem.  Pets lives depend on it, and its part of the job and utmost care should be taken all around.   Therefore, because of the size and quantity I would personally think the chances were greater with a huge company.  Hiring people who they cant constantly monitor and they may not do their job correctly and all that kind of stuff.

What is a "small" company anyway?  I think they are all pretty big but some have gotten HUGE... and generally I hate to say it when things blow up like that you start to sacrafice quality.  That goes with all businesses IMO.