In the former example, there's far more pressure on the smaller companies, which is why in such a regime people expect more consistent quality from the big guys, and the smaller guys are often boutique in some way (=offering something unique in their service/product in order to be able to compete). Small guys have a hard time standing up to big guys.

On the other hand, in a regime where no one becomes that huge, like the latter example, there's still pressure, but the competition is fair, just like if all the companies were similarly big (except that you can't have that many big companies in a single industry, by proportion definitions).

Realizing this drove home why inconsistent antitrust enforcement appears to produce bad results. Because it leaves us in the state of the former example. It's also unfortunately the intermediate state of getting serious with antitrust enforcement.

Like.. before? When we didn't have nationwide food recalls that had seeped into nationwide fast food chains and bagged products distributed into every commercial food selling outlet, under a myriad of different names?

The United States has allowed many industries to consolidate, but the fines they face when they mess up are infinitely small compared to their size.

Not only is the blast radius smaller, but small businesses are less incentivized to cut corners since serious violations pose a greater risk to their business than large businesses. Corruption is essentially legalized in America via lobbying, but only big companies can really afford to lobby and make huge campaign contributions to sway the government in their favor.

Government is meant to be a check on businesses, but that completely falls down once business is big enough to buy the government. It wouldn't surprise me if quality control at large companies is worse for the simple fact that they know who to pay off if they get caught, as Taylor Farms has here.