July 2025
The Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) and American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) partnered on a 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.
The frozen food cold chain operates on longstanding monitoring and temperature recording policies. These policies have served the industry well, delivering high food quality and preservation standards. Around the world these policies have coalesced around broadly similar temperature bounds and are monitored and enforced through contractual and regulatory requirements that are checked at ‘handoff’ (or other) inspection intervals. Since these common practices were established, significant innovations have been made in the equipment, buildings, and monitoring technology used to deliver the cold chain.