New protocol standardizes frozen food supply chain monitoring
The Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) and the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) recently developed a new protocol to standardize and modernize temperature monitoring across the frozen food supply chain.
This protocol provides a unified, data-driven approach to tracking temperature fluctuations from production to distribution, the associations reported. It is designed to help frozen food manufacturers, cold chain logistics providers, and retailers improve operational efficiency, enhance food quality and safety, and reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are major opportunities for businesses across the cold chain to identify and eliminate inefficiencies in how they use energy to keep food frozen,” Shane Brennan, GCCA senior vice president of strategy, partnerships, and policy, said in a news release. “To seize this opportunity, it’s critical to build a shared understanding of how to monitor and log temperatures across every link in the chain.
“This protocol is a big step forward and lays the foundation for greater collaboration to drive efficiency, sustainability, and high-quality food preservation.”
The frozen food cold chain operates on the basis of well-established monitoring practices that deliver high-quality food and preservation standards across the world. While these practices have served our industry well, significant technological advancements in equipment, facilities, and monitoring capabilities now provide unprecedented access to temperature data throughout the product journey. This creates the opportunity for innovation in the relative temperature tolerances set out in the operating procedures.
Recognizing this opportunity, AFFI and GCCA convened a taskforce of industry experts and professionals to develop a standardized protocol for capturing, recording, and understanding temperature fluctuations from production through final distribution. This initiative addresses a critical knowledge gap in our industry regarding the real-world temperature variations experienced by frozen products.
“This protocol represents a major advancement for frozen food manufacturers and broader cold chain partners as we drive continued improvements in quality and sustainability,” said Dr. Sanjay Gummalla, AFFI’s SVP of scientific affairs and food safety. “By establishing a common framework for monitoring temperature fluctuations, we’re not only improving consistency across the cold chain—we’re also laying the groundwork for a more sustainable future.”
Key protocol features: The newly developed protocol provides guidance on:
- Identification of critical monitoring points across the supply chain
- Best practices for data collection, management, and analysis
- Establishment of baseline measurements for future research and improvement
Industry benefits: Implementation of this protocol will enable our industry to:
- Better understand variations in temperature set points across different products and operators
- Identify and address significant temperature deviations during product journeys
- Support future initiatives to optimize energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- Provide foundational data to further explore and enhance food safety, quality, and shelf-life implications
Looking ahead, this protocol represents the first phase of a broader industry initiative, the associations added. In the coming months, a taskforce will develop additional guidance documents addressing food quality assessment, shelf-life optimization, food safety considerations, and energy measurement protocols.