There is no single temperature at which the cold chain breaks. Every product group has its own upper limit written into regulation, and those limits sit more than twenty degrees apart: minced meat must not rise above 2 °C, frozen food above -18 °C. The second factor that spoils product is the total time spent above the limit.
A threshold table only helps after the product and exposure time define what the cold chain is.
The values come from rules in force in Turkey and apply to the product's own temperature; the air in the body can briefly rise above them when a door opens. Where a customer specification sets a tighter limit, that one applies.
| Product group | Transport upper limit | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Quick-frozen food | -18 °C, short rise of 3 °C at most | Quick-Frozen Foods Communiqué Art. 5 |
| Red meat / offal | 7 °C / 3 °C | Hygiene Regulation Art. 17 |
| Poultry | 4 °C | Art. 22 |
| Minced meat / meat preparations | 2 °C / 4 °C | Art. 31 |
| Fresh fish | Close to melting ice | Art. 52 |
| Frozen fish | -18 °C, short fluctuation of 3 °C at most | Art. 52 |
| Raw milk | 6 °C; 10 °C when collected from the farm for immediate processing | ATP Annex 3 (Art. 55: 10 °C on arrival) |
| Cold-chain medicines | +2 / +8 °C | TİTCK, 27.12.2018 |
Touching the threshold is not the same as spoiling
When a door opens the air warms within seconds, while the core of the product does not warm at the same rate. So a single peak in the record is not a verdict; what counts is how many minutes in total the product spent above the limit. Three five-minute excursions and one unbroken forty-five minutes may look alike on a chart, yet they do not do the same thing to the load. FAO's HACCP monitoring guidance asks for what, where, how and how often to measure to be defined in advance; if the measuring point and logging interval are not written down, a peak cannot be read.
In frozen goods the damage takes another route. Water from a partly thawed surface refreezes into larger crystals, the crystals damage the tissue, and the product releases water when it is finally thawed. The communiqué allows only a short rise of 3 °C during transport and distribution; a fluctuation that looks like a small bump in the record shows up on the plate.
Spoiled medicine has no smell or colour, so the temperature record is what shows the state of a batch; a batch with gaps in its record is set aside to await quality assessment. On a mixed load the limit of the most sensitive product applies to the whole load: if poultry and raw milk share a container, the setting follows 4 °C. Writing each product group's limit and its legal basis at the top of the log sheet speeds up the decision when an excursion happens.
