SQF Edition 8 is the current edition of the SQF Code.

What is New? An overview summary of the SQF Edition 8 Changes

SQF Code has been updated with 4 goals in mind.

• to better fit the needs of industry sectors,
• to take into account the latest regulatory requirements such as FSMA,
• to encourage continuous improvement
• to meet requirements in the new GFSI Benchmarking Requirements in GFSI V. 7.

The biggest changes are that the schemes are no longer referred to as Level 1, 2 and 3 and the code is now divided into different documents for the different industry sectors and quality. You will find 6 separate codes:

1. Primary Production (Modules 2+ one of: 5, 6, 7, 7H, 8) now referred to as Food Safety Fundamentals) a
2. Manufacturing (Modules 2+ one of: 3, 4, 9, 10, 11). Now includes Pet Food and Animal Feed.
3. Storage and Distribution (Modules 2+ 12)
4. Manufacture of Packaging Materials (Modules 2 + 13)
5. Retail (new, Module 15)
6. SQF Quality Code: A company will implement the quality code (formerly level 3) after achieving certification to one of the Food Safety Schemes.

Download PDF Overview of the Changes to the SQF Requirements

You may download the SQF 8 Code for free at SQFI.

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Training Courses for SQF Edition 8 now Available

View a list of the new courses available

Training FAQs

If I am trained on Edition 7.2 do I need to be retrained on Edition 8?

Being trained on Edition 8 is an excellent way to learn the new requirements and demonstrate knowledge of SQF version 8. The code requires that the practitioner understands requirements, but does not identify specific training for upgrading to version 8.

Is there a class or templates that only cover the changes?

At this time we have full training courses and documentation packages, and not a training or documents focused only on the changes. If you are interested in using our documentation and training, it will cover all of the requirements of Edition 8. Trainees would be trained on all of the requirements. To use the document templates, you would choose if you want to use all of the procedures and forms, or adopt some of them and then make modifications to your existing procedures where that is more efficient for you. In both cases our documentation would give you good examples of documentation that describes compliant processes.