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:
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.”
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.
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