1. BACKGROUND
1.1. Sedex and SMETA
The Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) is a not-for-profit, membership organisation for businesses
committed to the continuous improvement of ethical performance within their supply chains. Sedex was
founded in 2001 by a group of UK retailers to drive convergence in social audit standards and monitoring
practices. The aims of Sedex are to ease the auditing burden on suppliers through the sharing of reports and to
drive improvements in supply chain Labour Standards.
This Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) has been developed by the Sedex Associate Auditor Group
(AAG), through multi- stakeholder consultation, to provide a best practice reference framework for social
auditing and reporting. It draws from practices defined by Sedex members and by the Global Social
Compliance Programme (GSCP) w