New Protocol Standardizes Temperature Monitoring for the Frozen Food Supply Chain

New Guidance Helps Supply Chain to Enhance Frozen Food Quality, Reduce Energy Use

July 21, 2025 – The Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) and the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) have 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. 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,” said Shane Brennan, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Partnerships, and Policy at the GCCA. “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.”

“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 Senior Vice President 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.”

Background

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.

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:

1. Better understand variations in temperature set points across different products and operators
2. Identify and address significant temperature deviations during product journeys
3. Support future initiatives to optimize energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
4. Provide foundational data to further explore and enhance food safety, quality, and shelf-life implications

Looking Forward: This protocol represents the first phase of a broader industry initiative. In the coming months, our taskforce will develop additional guidance documents addressing food quality assessment, shelf-life optimization, food safety considerations, and energy measurement protocols.
We invite all stakeholders in the frozen food supply chain to adopt these protocols and participate in this important industry-wide effort to enhance our collective understanding of temperature management. Together, we can make improvements that benefit consumers, businesses, and the environment that will help grow the category of frozen food.

Learn more and download the protocol here. View additional background information in a publicly-available industry memo here.

 

Contacts:

GCCA: Shane Brennan, Senior Vice President Strategy, Partnerships, & Policy | sbrennan@gcca.org
AFFI: Mary Emma Young, Vice President of Communications | meyoung@affi.com

 

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About the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA): The Global Cold Chain Alliance represents all major industries engaged in temperature-controlled logistics and is dedicated to building a universally strong cold chain where perishable products maintain quality and safety through each link. GCCA serves as the focused voice of the cold chain industry, representing 1,300 member companies in over 85 countries.

About the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI): The American Frozen Food Institute is the national trade association promoting and representing the interests of all segments of the frozen food industry. With over 400 frozen processors and associate members, AFFI works to advance the industry’s priorities, elevating the voice of frozen, and driving solutions for category performance. More information at www.affi.org.