Safe Food Preservation: DwyerOmega Helps Meet HACCP Temperature Control Standards for Refrigeration Systems

Posted on: 09/07/2025

Unless your home refrigerator just stopped working (or suddenly "vanished"), you probably haven't paid much attention to it lately.

Despite being one of the largest and most frequently used appliances in the home, the refrigerator often quietly performs its duty: keeping vegetables crisp and ice cream smooth. But the role of refrigeration goes far beyond preserving fresh food—it's the first line of defense against foodborne illnesses.

📜 Sự thật thú vị: The first practical refrigerated rail car, cooled by ice, was invented in Chicago for Swift & Co. in 1878, revolutionizing the meatpacking industry and changing the way people ate forever. (Wikipedia - Gustavus Franklin Swift)

The Danger Zone

According to the CDC, there are 31 microorganisms known to cause foodborne illnesses. In the United States, agents like norovirus, salmonella, and Staphylococcus aureus (staph) cause approximately 9.4 million infections each year, leading to 56,000 hospitalizations and 1,300 deaths.

Whether raw or cooked, if stored improperly, food becomes an ideal environment for bacteria to multiply. One of the most effective ways to prevent harmful bacteria is to ensure food doesn't stay in the "Danger Zone" for too long.

🌡️ "Danger Zone" is the temperature range from 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F)—where bacteria grow extremely rapidly. The longer food remains in this temperature range, the more easily bacteria can multiply. Simply put: if food isn't on the stove or on the table, it's best to keep it refrigerated. (USDA)

🕒 Do you know? When in the Danger Zone, the amount of bacteria in food can double in less than 20 minutes.

Food Safety & Management Systems

Food safety is a scientific discipline focused on preventing foodborne illnesses, guiding proper food handling, processing, and storage procedures. To ensure businesses comply with standards, various organizations and regulations exist, such as USDA, FDA, FSIS…

A prime example is the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) system—which helps food processing plants ensure safety from harvest until the food reaches the consumer. A key requirement of HACCP is that storage systems must be able to monitor, control, and record food storage temperatures, ensuring they stay out of the danger zone.

🚀 Fun Fact: HACCP was developed through a collaboration between Pillsbury, the U.S. Army's Natick laboratories, and NASA to create contamination-free food for space travel. (NASA Spinoff)

DwyerOmega Helps You Meet HACCP Standards

Series TS3 Digital Temperature Switch

To ensure HACCP compliance, industrial cold storage facilities use various sensors, transmitters, and switches to measure, monitor, and control temperatures in large-scale spaces. The DwyerOmega® Series TS3 is a digital temperature switch that operates on an on/off principle, compatible with various temperature probes, making it ideal for meeting industrial temperature control requirements under HACCP as well as other commercial food processing and handling applications.

Integrating a real-time clock, the device allows for the recording of temperature alarms due to thermal changes or power outages—a crucial feature for HACCP-compliant systems.