The recent salmonella and egg recall food scares may have had nothing to with pet food, but the global impact is reaching Aurora’s Procter & Gamble Pet Care facility in a big way.

P&G executives predicted that regulatory authorities will soon start to raise the bar for quality assurance regarding all kinds of food in the household, including pet food. That prompted a strategic move to beef up internal quality requirements here at the Aurora plant, which produces 30 percent of P&G’s Iams and Eukanuba brand products worldwide.

"Quality expectations change over time," explained interim manager Ingrid Bosch, a German native and 22-year P&G veteran. "We are not changing ingredients or formulation, just the way we handle the product and how we make it. This is a huge challenge for all the sites."

P&G currently has 149 full-time employees at the Aurora plant, including five who were recently reassigned to a new satellite warehouse which opened in Grand Island last week. There are also anywhere from 55-90 employees on site working for Exel, Inc., a third-party company hired to handle P&G’s warehouse operations.