What is a cold chain? What are the types of cold chains?

Cold chain refers to some food raw materials, processed foods or semi-finished products, special biological products and medicines. After acquisition, processing and inactivation, all the links are always in the specific low-temperature environment necessary for the products during the processing, storage, transportation, distribution, retail and use of the products, so as to reduce losses and prevent pollution and deterioration.

Cold chain equipment includes: low-temperature cold storage, normal-temperature cold storage, low-temperature refrigerator, ordinary refrigerator, refrigerated truck, refrigerated box, vaccine transport vehicle, spare ice platoon, etc.

Cold chain logistics generally refers to a systematic project that every link of frozen goods from production, storage, transportation, sales to consumption is always in a specified low temperature environment to ensure the quality and performance of goods.

Extended data:

Cold chain action

For perishable food, the temperature of cold storage is monitored by cold chain to ensure its excellent quality and food safety. Cold chain can control the temperature of perishable products, ensure the safety of their use, and ensure that products still have good quality when consumers buy them.

If the temperature control is not accurate enough, it will lead to a series of quality degradation of products, including not only the changes of general product characteristics, but also the changes of organizational structure and color, the damage in collision and extrusion and the reproduction of microorganisms.

Every link of the cold chain, from product picking to sales, needs to be controlled. Every link in the chain will have problems, which will cause the cold chain to break, or problems will easily occur on the platform of the warehouse, during transportation, during storage, or in the retail supermarket.

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-cold chain