This post originally appeared in Food Industry Executive.
The Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification program has long been recognized as both rigorous and respected by retailers, brand owners, and foodservice providers globally. With a community of over 14,000 certified sites across six continents, last month’s announcement of SQF Edition 10 was highly anticipated.
SQF Edition 10 does not introduce any new standards, only updates to existing ones. Change Management is now a standalone clause, encompassing changes to:
Food Safety Culture Plan Assessment will now include communication, training, employee feedback, and performance measurement, while Environmental Monitoring is now a mandatory clause and must be risk assessed.
Perhaps the biggest change is how audits will be scored. The new scoring system replaces the previous ratings (Excellent, Good, Complies, Fails to Comply) with three new levels:
Points are deducted based on the severity of the non-compliance, with weighted “core clauses” carrying higher point values due to their impact on food safety. These core clauses include:
Point values are as follows: 1 (minor non-conformance), 2 (core clause minor non-conformance), 5 (major non-conformance), 7 (core clause major non-conformance), and 50 (critical non-conformance).
The focus of the new system is to reduce recalls and emphasize food safety. Edition 10 will be auditable starting January 2, 2027.
5 best practices for achieving compliance
Implementing new changes and learning to abide by a reconstructed scoring system can be daunting. Here are five strategies to help your organization achieve compliance.
Some teams go after the easiest changes first to build momentum, while others tackle the harder cultural shifts that will take longer and require more participation. The order in which you tackle changes does not matter. What does matter is not reacting too quickly. Jumping immediately into action before completely understanding the new standards and the reasons for the changes could result in ineffective policies, lack of collaboration with other teams, and over-documentation.
Organizations must manage major shifts carefully, taking time to understand why a change is necessary, secure buy-in from departments, and roll out adjustments in a way that works for operations. Devoting sufficient time to correctly implementing change now will ultimately save time, money, and duplicated efforts later.
Initial assumptions often lead organizations to believe that every update demands a high-effort operational change, but this is not necessarily the case. It’s important to spend the first 30 days or so assessing what the changes in Edition 10 are truly asking organizations to do. Compare them to how your company already functions: do you actually need to adjust how you work, or do you just need to document and explain your system better? You may find that you’re already closer to compliance than you think.
Change management was sprinkled through Edition 9, but it is a separate standard in Edition 10. While most companies have a process in place to identify major changes such as new ingredients or new equipment, Edition 10 asks them to apply that process to small changes as well.
Still, nuance is required. If all changes are treated like major shifts, the system will become overwhelmed and fall apart. If the process is too open then important changes that could impact food safety will fall through the cracks. Companies need to find a sustainable and effective process that will work for both major and minor changes.
When it comes to implementing new changes, it’s not always senior leadership that needs extra persuasion, often it’s middle management. Senior leadership understands risk and brand protection and, moreover, they aren’t going to be on the floor overseeing the everyday action. That’s middle management’s job. As a result, when a new edition comes out, middle management often interprets it as more work: more documentation, more checks, more training, all while maintaining the delicate balance of production, staffing, downtime, and daily fire-fighting.
Middle managers must see the changes as more than just busywork; they must see true value in their ability to strengthen systems. Three points should be emphasized when addressing upcoming adjustments with middle managers:
Even if employees are open to adjusting their behaviors, it may be difficult to instill new habits after years of working a certain way. But the saying isn’t true; you can teach an old dog new tricks. You just have to approach it correctly.
Keep discussions simple and interactive, focusing on one topic at a time. At Catania Oils we don’t review every audit finding at once. Instead, we address one topic at each monthly town hall meeting. Our most recent topic was uniforms. We gamified it by creating AI images where employees had to find the hidden non-compliance discussed in previous town halls. Answers were submitted via QR code and revealed at the following town hall, where several winners were chosen to receive a prize. Keeping the message simple, interactive, and memorable ensures that it sticks.
Implementing Edition 10 will require commitment and diligence, but the payoff is clear: stronger food safety systems, fewer recalls, and a more resilient industry poised for continued growth.