Evaluation of the cold chain management options to preserve the shelf life of frozen shrimps: A case study in the home delivery services in Taiwan

Abstract

Increasing demand for chilled and frozen temperature food products led to the growth of home delivery cold chain services. This service is becoming popular because of its convenience and affordability. However, home delivery cold chains could face difficulties, especially in temperature control during the delivery of packages, such as too frequent door opening and closing, which can raise considerable food quality and food safety issues. In this study, we evaluated the temperature situation during transportation by four major home delivery service providers in Taiwan. Automatic temperature data loggers were used to record the temperature profile during transportation. The obtained data were then simulated with various scenarios to estimate the remaining shelf life and food loss probability by using the Monte Carlo algorithm with 10,000 iterations. The results showed that abusive temperature in real conditions could reduce the remaining shelf life of frozen shrimp by more than 70%. Lowering the maximum temperature to 15 °C or even to 7 °C had almost no impact on preserving the shelf life or reducing the quality of frozen shrimp. Among the developed scenarios, better preservation of remaining shelf life could be obtained by narrowing the fluctuation to −18 ± 3 °C. This scenario is recommended as an integral part of temperature management control in the home delivery cold chain, particularly in frozen food. These findings may help the food managers in the food cold chain industry to preserve the quality of low-temperature food product. Additionally, this study may be applied to manage the temperature in home delivery cold chain in other country with a similar condition.