Quality food

The business case 

Production and sale of dry pet food requires compliance with relevant regulations on nutritional requirements and pet food safety and resulting in a clear business case for chemical and microbiological testing.

Compliance is demonstrated through rigorous testing programmes, the aims of which are: 

• To assure pet owners that our products are safe and nutritional for our pets to eat.
• To help maintain consumer trust in the pet food industry’s commitment towards manufacturing and supplying nutritionally balanced, safe products that meet our pet’s needs.
• To ensure that pet food manufacturers meet the regulatory requirements to operate pet food factories e.g. compliance with Salmonella regulations.

Openness, transparency and education also help ensure widespread awareness of the importance of this testing regime throughout the supply chain ‘field-to-bowl’.

However, with physical testing the picture is different. If we consider dry pet food as a case study, it is likely that only a few people understand physical testing and its importance. 

One potential reason for this is that there is no legal requirement to do this and therefore less awareness. The absence of any legal requirements also raises the questions “Why bother carrying out physical testing of dry pet food?” and “What are the business benefits of spending money on physical testing?”.

Why bother?

Although the business case is clear for both chemical and microbiological testing, how can we justify physical testing? We can answer this question by considering stakeholder requirements, i.e. the needs of people from ‘field-to-bowl’. Key stakeholders include pet food manufacturers, retailers, pets and pet owners. Like any business, pet food manufacturers and retailers exist to make money for their owners and to pay their employees. 

To make money, safe products that pet owners want to buy must be manufactured and sold at a price they are willing to pay. This means that pet food production must be economic, sustainable, ensure food safety and produce palatable, nutritious, safe products for pet owners to feed to their pets.

To justify physical testing of dry pet food, the key question to answer is “How can physical testing help ensure satisfaction of stakeholder requirements?” Table 1 shows how stakeholder analysis can help answer this question.

Overcoming the barriers

Although Table 1 indicates a strong business case for physical testing of dry pet food, achieving buy-in to allocate resources for this might still be difficult. When project benefits are not widely understood, or seen as too narrow, getting support for a project can be challenging. For example, physical testing of dry kibble might be seen only as a QC/R&D tool, rather than a wider understanding of the benefits. Two strategies both based on a ‘total quality’ business approach can help overcome barriers to justifying investment in physical testing of dry pet food. A ‘Total Quality Management’ (TQM) approach is based on business wide commitment to achieve the same ‘high’ quality standards and can help people understand project benefits from a wider business benefits perspective. For example, physical testing data can be used for resource optimization, cost reduction, improved housekeeping and Salmonella control, improved product performance (palatability; reduction in customer complaints) et cetera.  The ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) concept of the 1990s moves away from seeing profit as the ‘bottom line’ of a Profit & Loss account to one based on wider business benefits around People, Planet and Profit. Applied to physical testing, TBL identifies the following business benefits: 

• People – Meeting the needs of pet owners, i.e. product performance. 
• Planet – Sustainability (Reduced waste; process control).
• Profit – Manufacture and supply of products that meet needs at an economic price.

Conclusion

Without any legal requirement, the need for dry pet food physical testing can be difficult to understand and justify. However, stakeholder analysis allows us to better understand the wider business benefits allowing use of a ‘total quality’ approach to overcome barriers in implementing this. The global pet food industry operates in a world of constant change with on-going challenges around resource availability/sustainability and customer demands. Including physical testing as a business tool is key to helping us survive and grow in the highly competitive 21st Century pet food industry.