Chiller Failure Overnight Before a Delivery
At 6:15 am a deli manager finds the walk-in chiller at 9.4°C; the last recorded check was 5:00 pm the previous day at 4°C. The door seal is torn and the condenser has iced up. Inside are: cooked sliced ham with use-by yesterday, opened coleslaw with use-by today, raw chicken breast with use-by tomorrow, a sealed bag of salad with use-by today, milk with use-by in three days, and a vacuum-packed hard cheese with a use-by date in two weeks. The manager's thermometer is checked monthly against a calibrated probe; the chiller display reads 9.4°C and the probe reads 9.1°C. A delivery of chilled pies is due at 7:00 am. The manager wants to move everything to a nearby café's fridge, relabel the ham with today's date, and sell the coleslaw because it is still 'within date'.
1. Decide what should happen to each listed item. Explain your reasoning, including uncertainty.
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The chiller was last checked at 4°C at 5 pm and is now 9.4°C at 6:15 am, so food may have been above 8°C for up to 13 hours; the actual time is unknown. Discard high-risk ready-to-eat foods: cooked ham, which is also past its use-by date; opened coleslaw; sealed salad; and milk. The ham cannot be relabelled. The raw chicken is intended for thorough cooking, but it has had a long unknown temperature abuse; without time and temperature evidence, discard it rather than assume cooking will fix spoilage or toxin risk. The vacuum-packed hard cheese is lower risk and can be kept if it is firm, has no mould and the pack is intact; if the manager cannot verify the time, use it only after assessment and preferably for cooking. The pies should not be accepted unless the chiller is repaired or another verified fridge is available.
2. What should the manager do about the 7:00 am delivery, the broken chiller and the records?
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Do not accept chilled pies into a chiller that cannot hold 5°C or below. Check the delivery vehicle and pie temperature; if they are not at 5°C or below, reject them. Move unaffected, properly wrapped stock to a verified fridge only if it has not been in the danger zone too long; do not use the move to rescue abused food. Turn off or isolate the chiller, call the engineer, and use a calibrated probe to check food, not just the display. Record the air and food temperatures, the time found, stock discarded, delivery rejected and repair. Keep the records for the required period. Review the HACCP plan: door seal checks, condenser cleaning, alarms, daily opening checks and a contingency plan. If there is no safe chilled storage, reduce the menu or close the chilled operation.
3. The manager proposes relabelling the ham with today's date and selling the coleslaw because it is 'within date'. Explain why this is unacceptable under food safety law and HACCP.
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A use-by date is a safety date, not a quality date. Once food has been temperature-abused, it may be unsafe even if the printed date has not passed; relabelling it with a new date misrepresents its history and is dishonest. The ham was already past its use-by date and must not be sold or used. The coleslaw is within date only on the assumption that it was kept at 5°C or below; the 9.4°C reading destroys that assumption. Relabelling would also break traceability and stock rotation records. Under HACCP, the manager must treat the temperature failure as a deviation, assess the food, discard it if safety cannot be demonstrated, and record the corrective action. The legal duty is to sell food that is safe and to keep accurate records; a due-diligence defence depends on evidence, not on changing labels.