Cold storage guidelines - A must know to preserve food / food products

Cold Storage is a way to prolong the food quality and to prevent the food spoilage. The cold temperature on food stops bacteria growth, especially in high risk food. Thus, arranging food in cold storage is important to maintain the food quality during the food supply chain (in food business).

High risk food such as fish， chicken and meat could be put into enclosed plastic container before keeping into freezer. This is to avoid dehydrated and smell affecting other food. Such food should be kept in the freezer with 0 - 2oC not later than 3 days. Seafood could be kept in freezer / cold room at -18oC or below. When the temperature is maintained, the seafood could be kept for 18 months. To confirm this, we can sample the seafood and do microbe analysis after a period of keeping time. Some companies with good technology of seafood processing is confident to declare their seafood to be kept for longer period.

Eggs and milk could be put at chiller (in between 0 - 4oC) to avoid bacteria infection. Bacteria is hardly grow at the temperature at 4oC or below. That is the reason we saw high risk food such as fish, chicken, meat and so on is kept in a chilled / frozen form in food business premise (hypermarket, fish market etc etc). However, do not misunderstand that bacteria would not be killed by freezing the food. The freezing is only can stop the bacteria growth. So, if the food contains a lot of bacteria, no matter how long the cold storage is kept, the food will always still spoilage and NOT SUITABLE to be consumed.

Cooked food / products must be kept at the upper part of chiller / freezer and above the raw food. This is because raw food contains more bacteria. If cooked food is placed below raw food, it is easily that bacteria contaminate the cooked food. Besides, all foods should be kept in enclosed container before put in freezer / refrigerator / chiller. With that, the cross contamination is unlikely to happen. In food processing plant. If there are 2 processing lines - cooked and raw food processing, operators should arrange the freezing of both products separately. In case only 1 freezer is available, raw food products should be put below cooked products.

Vegetables and fruits to be washed, dried and to be kept at the refrigerator space that meant for keeping vegetable. The drinks and sauce could be put at the refrigerator door side. So, that makes a fit storage. Anyway, we should be aware that not to keep too much food inside the freezer / refrigerator as it will reduce the ventilation of cool air, resulting the reduction of cooling. Also, putting hot food into the freezer will also effect the temperature of cooling.

In order to preserve food, we must rely on cold storage. However, to continuously maintaining the good practice, do control the quantity in freezer and apply FIFO in doing Cold Storage. Also, maintenance of freezer is important to maximize the efficiency.

Credit: Food Safety and Quality Division, Ministry of Health