Food Storage Temperatures

The Regulatory Obligations of the Restaurateur 12 April 2021

Respect the cold chain of foodstuffs is a compulsory regulation for the restaurant owner. Discover in this article the different T ° C for storing foodstuffs.

The restaurant owner has the obligation to respect the cold chain of foodstuffs in order to preserve the safety of the product.

The restaurateur therefore has the obligation to:

Adjust the T ° C of your equipment according to the foodstuffs stored in its refrigeration chamber
Take a reading of the T ° C of its refrigeration chambers once or twice a day (depending on the activity)

A broken cold chain promotes the proliferation of microorganisms at the risk of rendering the food unfit for consumption, even if the shelf life thereof is still valid. The food must therefore be thrown away in order to avoid any risk of food poisoning and thus preserve the safety of consumers from the most fragile (immunocompromised patient, elderly person, infant, pregnant woman, etc.) to the most resistant.

Maximum temperature of frozen food

Nature of food	Food storage temperature
Ice creams and ice creams	-18 ° C
Minced meat and frozen meat preparations	-18 ° C
Frozen fishery products	-18 ° C
Whole fish frozen in brine for use in preserves	-9 ° C

Maximum temperature of refrigerated food

Nature of food	Food storage temperature
Minced meats	+ 2 ° C
Meat preparations	+ 4 ° C
Poultry meat and small wild game	+ 4 ° C
Meat of domestic ungulates, meat of ungulate game	+ 7 ° C for carcasses and large pieces, + 4 ° C for cut pieces
Fresh fishery products, thawed unprocessed fishery products, cooked and chilled crustaceans and molluscs products	+ 2 ° C
Packaged fresh fishery products	* (1)
Egg products except UHT products	+ 4 ° C
Raw milk intended for consumption as is	+ 4 ° C
Pasteurized milk	T ° C defined under the responsibility of the manufacturer or the conditioner
Ripened cheese	T ° C defined under the responsibility of the manufacturer or the conditioner
Other perishable or very perishable food	+ 4 ° C
Prepared culinary preparations	+ 3 ° C

* (1) Melting ice temperature: 0 to +2 ° C

Be careful to respect by default the temperatures of the manufacturer and / or the conditioner.

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