I contend that you could put a teaspoon full of sand in your developing tank when you pour in the developer and it would make no difference. I also contend that Eastman Kodak Co quite possibly has historically the highest quality control of any company since the Industrial Revolution began. Ilford can't be far behind. I still say the developer would have worked fine. Hell, even Kodak D-76, Dektol, Fixer had black specks at the bottom of a mix. I never once had it show up anywhere in the finished work.Be glad these few companies even make this stuff any more. If you bang them over the head because it isn't perfect, they'll quit making it. Some things are just not worth the guff the customers give you.
I contend that you are not correct. I recently had the experience of black flakes in fixer, which I didn't notice because it was kept in a black light-tight plastic bottle. I only noticed it when pouring in the last bit of liquid into the developing tank, and immediately poured it out again and washed the film as well as I could and refixed with freshly mixed fixer. Well, it turns out that the film was ruined as the flakes stuck to the emulsion and I could not get it to let go. It looked fine, but on closer inspection there are hundreds of specks on every frame. The worst I could PS out after scanning, but for darkroom printing it will not be worth the hassle. So, no thank you to any particulate matter in my developing solutions. In fact, it is not a bad idea to filter stock solutions in any event. It takes a bit of extra equipment and it can be a slow process to filter out very fine gunk, so one doesn't want the developer powder to be the source of the problem for sure.
Edit: I would think that Ilford, like any company, makes products for as long as it is profitable for it to do so. Any non-conformance is important to know about, because it may relate to one of their suppliers having difficulties, or a change of personnel in their plants etc. The list of possibilities is long, and the feedback we give will help them to isolate the problem so it can be dealt with. This is not "banging over the head" as you call it. It is attempting to give direct, to the point feedback of the problem with the particular batch of product. If I were in Ilford's position, I'd be thankful for those who are giving feedback, as opposed to those who just silently decide to ditch the product and discourage others from using it. There is nothing wrong with ID-11 in general, so it is pointless trying to imply that photographers will stop using it based on one questionable batch.
