SQF Upgrade Requirement?

In being a good boy and not hijacking the recent thread: http://www.ifsqn.com...-level-3/page-2  I have decided to make a new thread to look at the comments of one of the posters GOC because it was something I hadn't heard of before and something that I thought was extremely interesting:

We are finding a number of our clients are being asked by customers to make the transition from L2 to L3 now.  

So I started a poll to see how prevalent customers telling (asking) their suppliers to upgrade their SQF level might be.  Please only vote if YOU are certified in SQF currently and of course anyone please feel free to join in on the conversation.

My concern on this topic is that SQF level 2 is a GFSI level certification and should be considered to be acceptable to any customer.  While I know quite well the difference between level 2 and 3 (because I was SQF level 3 at my last facility) I think this is a bad trend if it is widespread.  A customer can require quality standards without telling (or asking) a supplier to change their SQF level.

I know that you said they were being asked but I also know that sometimes a customer asking you to do something sometimes feels like you don't have much of a choice.

Before the code change a few years back, most everyone wanted level 3,  now that the code has changed and level 3 is structured differently, while companies still want level 3 it seems to be with not quite the intensity as before. 

None of our customers are yet requesting level 3 but I expect this will come in time.

I want to move from level 2 to 3 but my VP and CEO dont want to make the change unless a customer makes the request.

Even my SQF auditor said it wasnt really worth the 'hassle' to change from 2 to 3 without needing to!!

Where this can get tricky is if your company does contract manufacturing / packing. If the customer of a co-man/co-packer is Level 3, their expectations may make it necessary for the co-man / co-packer to either be Level 3, or if at Level 2 would require the Level 3 customer to perform a Level 3-type audit to be able to prove to their SQF auditor that their co-man /co-packers are providing them with the safety AND quality required to be SQF Level 3.

Bottom line: If the co-man / co-packer choose to remain Level 2 they can probably expect more SQF Level 3 style customer audits.