Rules and Regulations for Safe and Hygienic Food Transport

Rules and regulation abound the transportation of food, ensuring that logistics/freight companies keep your food safe.

Here at Cannon Logistics, we thought we’d give you some insight into just how your perishable goods are protected during transportation, which includes preventing damage, keeping your food hygienic, and ensuring that no contamination or bacterial diseases form.

Preventing damage

Making sure that food products aren’t damaged during transport is always a big concern of any logistics/freight company, and we’re no different. How foods are stocked are dependent on the types of foods themselves.

For the most part, however, foods are stocked in the likes of wrapping and boxes, and placed on pallets. The pallets are positioned to prevent movement as much as possible, thus protecting the foods from smashing or breaking open.

Hygiene

Foods are only allowed to be transported in certain types of freight vehicles. One of the major requirements is that these vehicles are designed so that any surfaces that food may come in contact with can be cleaned and even completely sanitised, if necessary. This greatly reduces the chances of cross-contamination or dormant bacteria from forming.

Temperature Management

While certain items can be transported with relative ease (i.e. potato chips, tinned food), a large majority of foods are classified as potentially hazardous food (PHF). Foods classified as PHF could potentially breed bacteria if not kept at the right temperatures.

The general rule is that any PHF must be stored either at 5 degrees or below or 60 degrees and above, depending on the food. So any foods that naturally are best kept at cool temperatures, must be stored at 5 degrees or below. Hot foods that will become contaminated if not properly dealt with must be kept 60 degrees or above.

This is because the temperatures between 5 and 60 degrees are known as temperatures that accelerate bacteria breeding. There are more rules for the 5 and 60 degree rule, including that the maximum transport time with these temperature can only be 4 hours, however, it is more ideal if these foods can be transported completely within 2 hours.

Hopefully this article has provided you with some insight into the rules and practices of how food goods are transported in Australia, and how we take care of foods that possess potential hazards.

If you have any further questions regarding how groceries are transported safely, please do not hesitate to contact us, or share them in the comments below.