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Search Paris, 18 November 2025 – The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) announced today that SMETA 7.0, Sedex’s flagship social and environmental auditing methodology, has achieved recognition from the Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative (SSCI), providing companies with additional information to support their independent sourcing decisions. With over 60,000 site-level audits conducted yearly, SMETA 7.0 remains the world’s most widely used social audit for assessing labour, health and safety, environmental, and business ethics risks across supply chains.
With this milestone, the SSCI provides comprehensive information about most of the social compliance tools available to CGF member companies and their partners across industries and geographies.
Here are a few actions taken by SMETA 7.0 to address previously identified gaps, including:
- Updating documentation regarding human rights training.
- Communicating human rights policies to business partners and relevant stakeholders.
- Mandating remediation and safeguarding of impacted workers, and requiring records of remediation actions.
Didier Bergeret, Director of Sustainability at the CGF, said, “As the world’s most widely used social audit platform, spanning 35 sectors in more than 180 countries, we are delighted to welcome SMETA 7.0 into the SSCI community of recognised schemes.”
Didier Bergeret, Director of Sustainability at the CGF, said, “As the world’s most widely used social audit platform, spanning 35 sectors in more than 180 countries, we are delighted to welcome SMETA 7.0 into the SSCI community of recognised schemes.”
Jon Hancock, Chief Executive Officer of Sedex, said, “I’m so pleased that SMETA 7.0 has achieved this major milestone. The Consumer Goods Forum’s SSCI is a highly respected initiative that confers significant credibility on the schemes within this community. Being SSCI-recognised provides our customers and other stakeholders with powerful, independent validation on SMETA’s rigour, robustness and reliability.”
Jon Hancock, Chief Executive Officer of Sedex, said, “I’m so pleased that SMETA 7.0 has achieved this major milestone. The Consumer Goods Forum’s SSCI is a highly respected initiative that confers significant credibility on the schemes within this community. Being SSCI-recognised provides our customers and other stakeholders with powerful, independent validation on SMETA’s rigour, robustness and reliability.”SMETA 7.0’s recognition under both the Processing & Manufacturing and Primary Production scopes confirms its alignment with the SSCI Social Compliance Benchmark. By undergoing the SSCI Benchmarking Process – the SSCI’s practical guidance tool – Sedex demonstrates its role in strengthening trust and embedding sustainability at scale, providing companies with additional information to support their independent sustainability decisions.
To date, SSCI has recognised seven schemes, with eight additional programmes currently undergoing the benchmarking process. By “verifying the verifiers”, the SSCI awards an additional, yet essential, layer of trust to those that demonstrate alignment with the SSCI Benchmark Criteria, providing businesses with additional information to support their independent identification and selection of ethical and sustainable practices. The SSCI recognises that auditing, monitoring and certification programmes are built upon solid certification processes and provide information about diverse sustainability best practices while preserving competitive choice.
For more information, please contact Forster UK
About the Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative
The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative (SSCI) builds trust in social and environmental sustainability standards worldwide by benchmarking auditing, monitoring and certification programmes and recognising schemes that meet industry expectations. Since 2019, the SSCI has provided consumer goods companies with information to support their independent and individually-made sourcing decisions, strengthen due diligence, and drive positive impact across global supply chains such as improved labour conditions, reduced environmental harm and ethical business practices in line with competition rules. For more information, visit www.tcgfssci.com.
About The Consumer Goods Forum
The Consumer Goods Forum (“CGF”) is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of best practices and recommended standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. Its members are the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have an estimated revenue of exceeding €5.2 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. The CGF is led by a Board of Directors formed of 54 CEOs – evenly split between retailers and manufacturers.
For more information, please visit: www.theconsumergoodsforum.com
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About Sedex
Sedex is a global technology company that specialises in data, insights and professional services to empower supply chain sustainability. Our platform, tools and services enable businesses to easily manage and improve their social, ethical and environmental performance, manage risk and meet their supply chain sustainability goals.
Sedex has over 20 years of expertise and provides end-to-end supply chain solutions for all businesses – including SMETA, our world-leading site-level social audit, which is SSCI-Recognised. We are an official GRI Software & Tools Partner, and certified for ISO 27001 (Information Security Management) and ISO 27701 (Privacy Information Management).
We’re proud to work with a community of 95,000 businesses and 115,000 supply chain sites across 35 sectors globally. This includes some of the world’s most recognisable brands such as JDE, Nestlé, Molson Coors, Yum! Brands, Marks & Spencer, Mengniu, Tesco, Asahi, Li & Fung, John Lewis Partnership (JLP) and Barclays. Visit our website for more information.
