Cold chain In food industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Cold chain In food industry - Essay Example Indeed, keeping the goods ‘in a safe, wholesome and good quality state from the production to the consumption stage’ (Aung, Chang and Kim 2012: 435) can be considered as the cold chain’s mission. Through a similar approach, food cold chain has been described as ‘a special kind logistics applied in food’ (Lan and Tian 2013: 347). When referring to cold chain emphasis should be given to the following fact: the quality of the cold chain’s products is difficult to be secured. In the food cold chain sector a similar issue appears. For this reason, a series of methodologies and standards have been introduced for ensuring quality in all phases of food cold chain. However, the full alignment of food cold chain with the relevant rules is not always easy, especially due to the cost involved. The various characteristics of food cold chain are analytically presented below. Reference is also made to the standards applied in the specific sector. A series of case studies has been employed in order to show the challenges that food cold chain has to face worldwide. It is proved that the sector’s advances are continuous but the lack of effective control mechanisms often reduce the quality of food cold chain’s products especially in countries with limited potentials to support food cold chain. Chapter 2 – Need for the cold chain in the food industry Cold chain, as a series of processes, has been established in order to respond to specific needs of the food industry. Reference is made in particular to fresh food products (such as vegetables, meal, fish and so on) that have to be transported to areas quite far from the area of production (Handley 2010). For such production, there can be 4 levels of transport, as described in Appendix 1 (Handley 2010). As it is made clear through the graph in Appendix 1 cold chain has a key role in the transport of fresh goods, a role that it is clearer at Transport levels 1 & 2 (Appendix 1), i.e. from factory/ production area to the wholesale (Handley 2010). At level 3 of the transport process, i.e. from the wholesale to the outlet, the value of cold chain is also critical, ensuring the high quality of fresh products that reach the market (Appendix 1). In practice, all parts of the transport process have to be developed in order for a food product to reach its destination, i.e. the end consumer; this means that cold chain, as part of the transport process, cannot be omitted since such initiative would destroy the rest of the parts of the transport process. This means that without the intervention of the cold chain fresh food products could not be available for consumers. In the study of Aung, Chang and Kim (2012) emphasis is given to the importance of the cold chain for the preservation of perishable foods; it is explained that without cold chain these foods could not reach consumers (Aung, Chang and Kim 2012). In other words, due to cold chain perishable foods can keep their qualities, as these qualities are described in table presented in Appendix 2. According to the specific table the qualities of perishable foo