When a shipment is delayed everyone looks at the temperature chart, yet Article 31 of the Turkish Regulation on Specific Hygiene Rules for Food of Animal Origin sets a second limit that runs on the calendar. Once the window has passed, the meat cannot be used for mince and goes to another purpose; a clean temperature record does not change that.
| Raw material | Slaughter to mince production |
|---|---|
| Chilled red meat | At most 6 days |
| Vacuum-packed boneless beef and veal | At most 15 days |
| Poultry meat | At most 3 days |
That is why vacuum changes the dispatch plan: sending the same beef without vacuum cuts the buyer's time from 15 days to 6. The slaughter date belongs beside the product line, and the remaining window is worked out in days at delivery.
Those date limits weigh as much as temperature in any plan for the cold chain on store deliveries.
Input temperature is a separate condition: poultry meat entering handling may not be above 4 °C, meat of other animals above 7 °C, offal above 3 °C. Right after production mince is packed and cooled to an internal temperature no higher than 2 °C or frozen to -18 °C or below, and that condition continues in storage and carriage.
For mechanically separated meat (MSM) the carcass age is counted differently: at most 7 days when deboning takes place in a cutting plant on the same site as the slaughterhouse, at most 5 days when carcasses come from outside, and 3 days for poultry. A carcass that arrives from outside spends part of the window on the road.
