London, UK: A London South Bank University research project is broadly supportive of industry calls to lift the temperature of frozen goods by three degrees. Researchers from the Transport, Industrial and Commercial Refrigeration project said that potential solutions to limit cold chain emissions include increasing the recommended set-point of storing and transporting frozen food by 3 deg C.
A separate industry-led campaign argues that there is a growing evidence base that shows the basic average temperature for most refrigerated foods could be set at – 15 Deg C without compromising product quality or consumer health.
The Transport, Industrial and Commercial Refrigeration project is government-funded and brings together experts from organisations such as the Carbon Trust, the Institute of Refrigeration, and academics. Catarina Marques, project manager, Transport, Industrial and Commercial Refrigeration, and senior fellow at London South Bank University, said part of the project’s research around encouraging more sustainable temperature-controlled vehicles would be to look at how energy demand could be reduced by changing the recommended refrigeration temperature during transport.
Marques said that raising the recommended temperature to -15 deg C from -18 deg C was not expected to impact product safety due to a lack of microbiological growth. However, She said it would still be important to understand the impacts of introducing any temperature changes to overall product quality and the potential reductions in energy use and emissions. “I guess more research would be needed on that. It would depend on the type of food, but we’ve actually modelled that scenario for cold stores and we will do the same for transport,” she said.
Tom Southall, executive director, Cold Chain Federation, said the issue of rethinking temperature set points had been put forward as one possible route to reduce overall emissions from the cold chain for a number of years. The issue was also raised during the COP28 Climate Change Conference held at the end of 2023. He said further research on the issue was welcome in order to create understanding about best and most effective temperature with which to store and transport refrigerated food.
“We stick to -18 deg C generally as the set point for the frozen food supply chain, but actually, can we increasingly afford to do that without evidence that this is definitely the minimum temperature that products need to be kept at when we need to be using less energy?” Many logistics companies back the arguments to rethink the refrigeration temperature setpoint. “It would now be crucial to therefore get support from manufacturers and food retailers about enacting such a change, Southall said.
“It’s quite a complex picture on who exactly is it that determines those temperatures. There are some Codex Alimentarius and other national and international guidelines that set – 18 degree C. So it’s going to be quite a long journey to achieve change.”
“But that absolutely shouldn’t put us off doing so because the prize, if you like, of how much energy you could wipe off the cold chain just by making a change like that would be pretty game changing. But obviously, it has to make sure food quality and food safety is not impacted,” Southall said.
