Trade term
SMETA, and who pays for a social audit
SMETA is a method for auditing labour standards and site safety, with a longer version that adds environment and business ethics. Its owner calls it continuous improvement rather than certification, and by design the visit ends in a report and a corrective action plan on a members platform instead of a pass mark anyone can forward.
The figures
| What the shorter version covers | Labour standards and site health and safety |
|---|---|
| What the longer version adds | Environment and business ethics |
| What it produces | An audit report and a corrective action plan, shared on a members platform |
| What it never produces | A certificate or a pass mark |
| Who may carry it out | Auditors registered with the sector's professional association |
| Our position | No audit commissioned, and no report on any platform |
What it changes on an order
Your ethical trading policy names it as a requirement
Say which version you mean. The two cost different money, take different time on site, and answer different questions about the same farm.
You are putting the requirement to a small grower
The bill lands on the smallest company in the chain. Where the requirement is genuine, the cost belongs inside the price conversation instead of sitting in front of it as a precondition.
A report reaches you carrying open findings
Findings are the ordinary outcome and their absence would be the odd result. What deserves your attention is the closure evidence and its date.
What this note does not settle
- No audit has been commissioned here and no report exists to share. Where your policy makes one a condition of trading, that condition is unmet.
- A report describes one visit to one site. It says nothing about a contractor engaged three weeks later for the harvest.
- Spanish employment law binds an employer with or without an audit. A social audit measures practice against a code, and the code sits above the law rather than replacing it.
No pass mark, and a bill at the small end
The visit produces a document describing what an auditor saw, with findings and a plan for closing them. Nobody passes. That is deliberate, and the owner of the method says as much: it is built around continuous improvement rather than a verdict. For a purchasing team the consequence is unwelcome and unavoidable. Somebody has to read the report and form a judgement, and that work resists being reduced to a checkbox.
The other consequence is financial. An audit is arranged at the site being audited, so a requirement written in a head office is paid for at the far end of the chain by whichever company has the thinnest margin. Requiring one of a small grower is a cost decision wearing compliance clothes, and it is better discussed as a cost than passed down as a condition.
Which version you mean, and what we have
Scope varies more than the name suggests. The shorter version examines labour standards and safety on the site; the longer one adds environment and business ethics and takes more days on the ground. Decide which you want before anyone quotes for it. Policies naming neither are common, and they generate quotations that arrive at different numbers for what looks like the same request.
Nothing has been commissioned here, so there is no report on any platform and no access for you to request. Where an ethical trading policy makes an audit a condition of supply, we cannot meet it, and this page exists so a buyer discovers that while reading instead of three emails into an onboarding pack. The requirement stays yours to set; what changes is when you learn the answer.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.