The Benefits of the SQF Fundamentals Program

A food safety plan is paramount to creating, developing, or maintaining any successful supplier/buyer trading partnership, which leads to the creation of the SQF Fundamentals Program by SQFI.

SQFI offers the Fundamentals Program for Food Manufacturing and the Fundamentals Program for Primary Producers. Each program has both basic and intermediate levels and provides a step-by-step approach to improve food safety management.

The SQF Fundamentals Program helps to facilitate retailer acceptance of small/medium supplier and entrepreneurs, providing food safety security and acceptance along the supply chain. This is solution was designed specifically for those who don’t have a robust food safety management program in place or want to take their existing program to the next level.

Benefits of the SQF Fundamentals Program:

• It is a streamlined path to GFSI Food Safety Certification.
• The technical requirements in all the Food Safety Fundamental Codes meet the requirements in the GFSI Global Markets Program.
• The layout and design of the SQF Codes, including the Fundamentals Code, is designed to help you achieve the level of food safety certification that you need. Each Code builds on the previous one to provide a continuous improvement certification pathway.

Advantages of the SQF Fundamentals Program:

• Only CBs licensed to SQF can issue a certificate against the SQF Fundamentals Code
• Only auditors that are registered with SQF can audit against the SQF Fundamentals Code
• There is no score issued upon completion of the certification or certification audit. However, for those sites that need a score to meet a retailer requirement, there is an option for scoring. The goal was to place the emphasis on the level of non-conformance and the number of deficiencies issued. A site passes and receives a certificate all non-conformances have been closed out and a surveillance audit is required for those sites that received 2 major or 10 minor non-conformances.

Ways to Participate in the SQF Fundamentals Program:

SQFI has established a three-pronged approach to expertly address the learning and access needs for varying audiences:

• Online course (focus is on the Intermediate Level)
• Paper-based, self-directed learning tools
• Instructor-led training by approved licensed trainers

Learn more about the Fundamentals program