Frozen meals - cooling requirements

Hi

I am setting up a frozen ready meal site and investigating legal requirements (UK) for cooling and freezing.

I know many retailer standards stipulate to cool to <5 within 4 hours, maximum 6 hours however cannot find any absolute legal time / temperature requirements?

Also, what about time taken to reach -18C? I can find absolutely nothing on this but surely there must be a requirement- otherwise a meal could sit around -2 or there abouts for days

I am UK based

Thanks for any guidance

I am sure it is legislated in Australia that food must cool from >60C to <20C in 2 hours, then to <5C within a further 4 hours. I had a very quick look online but couldn't find anything (as the danger zone storage information comes up instead). 

 

I am unsure about freezing times sorry.

Hi

I am setting up a frozen ready meal site and investigating legal requirements (UK) for cooling and freezing.

I know many retailer standards stipulate to cool to <5 within 4 hours, maximum 6 hours however cannot find any absolute legal time / temperature requirements?

Also, what about time taken to reach -18C? I can find absolutely nothing on this but surely there must be a requirement- otherwise a meal could sit around -2 or there abouts for days

I am UK based

Thanks for any guidance

Hi Freedim,

 

Do you mean a Frozen food Manufacturing facility or what ?

Yes, sorry for my lack of clarity - I am referring to a frozen ready meal manufacturing site

Hello,

 

Freezing is more a technical and engineering issue than legal. 

 

First you may need to know the type of freezing technology available in the facility such as (blast freezer, tunnel freezer, belt freezer, Fluidized bed freezers, Contact freezers, Immersion freezers, Indirect contact freezers, Plate freezers, Cryogenic freezers, Liquid Nitrogen freezers and Liquid carbon dioxide freezers). 

 

Second, I would consider the dimension of the food product and geometric attributes such thinness, length, weight, physical status and type of packaging. I would also consider the ingredients (mainly salt and sugar), it may change the freezing point. 

 

Once I know the above two questions, then you can optimize and calculate the time it takes to freeze a food product. You can use the Plank Equation to calculate the freezing time. I would also recommend that you look at the freezing curve concept. Below you can see the Plank Equation and the Freezing Curve for food: 

 

Freezing curve

Yes, sorry for my lack of clarity - I am referring to a frozen ready meal manufacturing site

Hi Freedim,

 

I suggest a browse through this UK-oriented thread -

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...es/#entry176166

 

The above (in my case thanks mainly to Google) is focused on chilled foods which (ultimately) tend to be more T/t sensitive than frozen however my guess is that there are frozen comments at similar sources.

Hi, 

I am sure it is the case, but can someone back me up that there is no legal requirement for time to reach <-18C for frozen foods?