Low temperatures alone are not enough to guarantee frozen food safety
The new version of the "Food Safety Law" will take effect on October 1, 2015. One of its highlights is that it provides a special elaboration on the issue of food transportation, begins to pay attention to safety monitoring of food throughout the entire supply process, and uses legal means to strongly push forward the upgrading of the cold chain logistics industry.
The key to frozen food safety is that the cold chain cannot be "broken"
Cold chain logistics consists of multiple links, from the cultivation and procurement of food raw materials, processing, circulation and distribution, all the way to the entire process of retail and consumption. It is a complex low-temperature systems engineering project, and ensuring quality and safety issues in each link is the core of cold chain logistics. To ensure the quality and safety of frozen food, the most critical thing is that the "cold chain" cannot be broken, that is, during the manufacturing, storage, transportation and distribution, and retail processes of food, it should always remain in a controlled low-temperature state. The insufficient number of refrigerated trucks and non-standard operation are becoming important safety hazards for cold chain food. For many reasons, in recent years, the annual production and sales of refrigerated and insulated vehicles in China have remained between 4,000 and 5,000 units, far from meeting the actual demand of the frozen food market.
Shortcomings in the cold chain restrict enterprise development
At the world-class food distribution center of Baisheng Group in Hangzhou, the food operated by Baisheng Group is temporarily stored at low-temperature unloading docks when it is transferred among freezer warehouses, refrigerated warehouses, and refrigerated trucks. Food is stored, handled, selected and transported at a constant temperature, ensuring the integrity of the cold chain, thereby safeguarding food safety and quality.
Food providers operating cold chain logistics business themselves reflects, to a certain extent, the insufficient cold processing and cold chain logistics facilities in China. Data shows that at present, the refrigerated transport rate of perishable food in developed countries has exceeded 60%, among which the United States, Japan, Western Europe and other countries and regions exceed 80%, while China has only about 20%. In total meat output, chilled fresh meat accounts for only 10%, and frozen meat product output accounts for only 15%, a large gap compared with the level in developed countries, where the meat cold chain circulation rate is 100% and accounts for 50% of total meat output. Because third-party cold chain logistics is underdeveloped, many frozen food enterprises are still at the stage of self-operated logistics, which has seriously affected their core competitiveness.
Refined management ensures constant-temperature quality
Why do many frozen foods have quality problems such as "dumplings fall apart as soon as they enter the pot, and fish breaks apart as soon as it enters the pot"? The problem lies in temperature fluctuations of perishable food during the transportation link. The reasons for this situation include, besides non-standard practices in the transportation link of cold chain food and improper storage in supermarkets and shopping malls causing cold chain food to "drop the chain", one of the most important reasons is that China's cold chain logistics standards are currently chaotic. On the one hand, China's cold chain logistics standards currently overlap among national standards, industry standards, and local standards; on the other hand, most cold chain logistics standards are mostly recommended standards and are not mandatory, and non-mandatory standards have extremely low binding force in the current environment where the cold chain logistics industry is not yet mature, and their guiding role for cold chain logistics enterprises is very limited.
Specifically, the entire cold chain, from warehousing, transportation to distribution, and then to terminal consumption, must all be within the prescribed temperature range. It involves staffing, loading efficiency, timing coordination, and so on. For example: it can be refined to the extent that each vehicle must be equipped with two drivers to prevent fatigue driving, with the driver changed every 4 hours; two temperature controllers must be placed, one in the middle and one at the back; each vehicle is equipped with an infrared detection device, specifically to measure temperature before loading, because the outbound temperature of a product is very important throughout the entire cold chain transportation process. First, the temperature must be controlled well from the starting point, and then a temperature record must be made every 4 hours along the way. What ensures food quality is not only low temperature, but more importantly "constant temperature". Constant temperature requires strict standards to achieve.