Cold chain
Which cold-chain standards actually apply to food, and which do not
Cold-chain marketing copy tends to list certifications the way a trophy cabinet lists trophies: ISO 23412, BRCGS, EU GDP, WHO PQS, GCCA, all in one line, as if they were interchangeable proof of the same competence. They are not. Some of those names are food-relevant standards a produce exporter should genuinely check for. Others are real, legitimate standards for a completely different product class, pharmaceuticals or vaccines, and a cold store citing them is telling you about its pharma-grade capability, not its ability to hold your citrus or seafood at the right temperature. This guide sorts the list into what actually applies to food cold storage and transport, what does not, and what question to ask a prospective provider instead of reading their logo wall at face value. As of 4 September 2026, this is where each standard actually stands.
Key facts
- ISO 23412:2020 is a current, food-relevant ISO standard specifically for indirect, temperature-controlled land transport with intermediate transfer points.
- BRCGS Storage and Distribution Issue 4, published 11 October 2020, remains the current issue as of September 2026, with minor amendments effective 10 August 2026, not a new Issue 5.
- EU GDP guidelines (2013/C 343/01) and WHO PQS are real, current standards, but they cover medicinal products and vaccine cold-chain equipment respectively, not food.
- GCCA publishes best-practice guidance and runs the Certified Cold Carrier transport certification; it has no single numbered, certifiable cold-storage standard.
- Food-relevant certifications a cold store can genuinely hold include BRCGS S&D, FSSC 22000, SQF, and ISO 22000, all built on the Codex Alimentarius HACCP framework.
ISO 23412: a genuine, current standard for refrigerated transport
ISO 23412:2020, titled Indirect, temperature-controlled refrigerated delivery services, land transport of parcels with intermediate transfer, is a real and current ISO standard as of this writing, not withdrawn or superseded. It sits in the small category of numbered ISO standards written specifically for cold-chain logistics rather than adapted from a general quality-management framework, and its scope is temperature-controlled land transport of parcels that pass through at least one intermediate transfer point, which covers a meaningful share of how refrigerated freight actually moves between a packhouse and a port or airport.
Because it is one of the few standards written for this exact scenario, it is worth asking any land-transport provider whether they operate to it, and if so what evidence they hold, rather than assuming a general logistics ISO 9001 certificate covers the same ground. ISO 23412 is scoped narrowly to indirect delivery with transfer points, so confirm it is relevant to the lane you are actually using before treating it as a checkbox.
BRCGS Storage and Distribution: check the issue number, not just the name
BRCGS Global Standard for Storage and Distribution Issue 4 was published on 11 October 2020 with audits starting from 1 May 2021, and it remains the current live issue as of September 2026: no Issue 5 has been announced. A set of minor amendments took effect from 10 August 2026, sometimes referenced in trade materials by an internal document code, but these are amendments within Issue 4, not a new issue, so a certificate stamped Issue 4 is still current provided the holder has kept pace with the 2026 wording updates.
BRCGS S&D is explicitly scoped to Food, Packaging, and Consumer Products logistics, with storage, distribution and transport selectable within that scope, and it is GFSI-recognised, which makes it one of the genuinely food-relevant certifications on this list. When a cold store cites BRCGS, ask which scope they hold (storage only, or storage plus transport) and confirm the certificate is against Issue 4, published 11 October 2020 and still the current issue, with any amendments BRCGS has since issued against it applied.
EU GDP and WHO PQS: real standards, wrong product class
This is where the trophy-cabinet approach to marketing does real damage. The EU Good Distribution Practice guidelines, published as 2013/C 343/01 in the Official Journal of the EU under Directive 2001/83/EC, govern the wholesale distribution of medicinal products for human use: pharmaceuticals. They remain the current foundational EU GDP framework as of September 2026, with no formal replacement yet in force, and they are a serious, rigorous standard within their own domain. But that domain is medicines, not food. A cold store advertising GDP compliance is describing its pharma-grade capability, temperature mapping, qualified personnel, and documented distribution controls suited to medicinal products, and that is a genuinely useful signal if you are shipping temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals. It tells you nothing directly about food-safety competence, and should not be read as a food certification.
WHO PQS, the Performance, Quality and Safety programme, is WHO's prequalification scheme for immunisation and vaccine cold-chain equipment: vaccine refrigerators, freezers, cold rooms, cold boxes, temperature monitors and solar refrigeration units used in national immunisation supply chains. It sits under WHO's Immunization Devices programme and is vaccine and pharma-specific by design. A facility listing WHO PQS on its capability sheet is telling you it can handle equipment built to immunisation-supply specifications, which again is a real and specific competence, just not a food one. If a provider lists either GDP or WHO PQS alongside food certifications without distinguishing them, ask directly which product classes each certification actually covers at that site.
GCCA: guidance and a certification programme, not a numbered standard
The Global Cold Chain Alliance is a legitimate and long-established industry body, but it does not publish a single numbered, certifiable cold-storage standard comparable to ISO 23412 or BRCGS S&D. What GCCA actually produces is best-practice guidance, including its Commodity Storage Manual, a Cold Chain Transportation Best Practices Guide, and a Food Freezing and Storage Calculator, alongside Cold Facts trade publication. Separately, GCCA runs the Certified Cold Carrier programme, a third-party certification for refrigerated transport operators. That programme is real and worth checking for, but it is structurally different from citing 'the GCCA standard,' because no such single document exists.
GCCA's own history is genuinely multi-stranded rather than pinned to one clean founding date: its constituent associations trace back to 1891 for the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses, 1994 for the International Refrigerated Transportation Association, and 1943 for what became the World Food Logistics Organization, now under the GCCA banner. Reported dates for when these bodies formally consolidated into GCCA vary across sources, so this guide does not state a single merger year: treat any specific date you see elsewhere as unconfirmed unless it comes from GCCA's own current text. What matters operationally is that a provider citing GCCA membership or the Certified Cold Carrier mark is citing real affiliation and, in the latter case, a real audited certification, just not a numbered technical standard.
The actual food-safety backbone: HACCP, Codex, and the certifications a cold store can genuinely hold
Underneath the food-relevant certifications sits Codex Alimentarius' General Principles of Food Hygiene, the internationally recognised text that defines the HACCP, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, system on which nearly every food-safety certification is built, including BRCGS, FSSC 22000, SQF, and ISO 22000. If a cold store cannot describe how its HACCP plan identifies and controls the specific hazards of temperature abuse at your commodity's critical control points, no amount of logo-wall certification substitutes for that gap.
Beyond BRCGS Storage and Distribution, three other certifications are genuinely food-relevant and worth asking about directly. FSSC 22000 is a GFSI-recognised scheme built on ISO 22000 plus sector-specific pre-requisite programmes, and its scope extends to storage and distribution as well as manufacturing. We could not confirm the precise name or contents of its transport and storage scope module against FSSC's own published scheme documents, so ask a prospective cold store which FSSC scope category its certificate actually names rather than assuming transport is inside it. SQF, Safe Quality Food, is another GFSI-recognised scheme, described in trade sources, though not in a primary standard document we could reach, as more prescriptive and strongly represented in North America. ISO 22000 itself is the underlying, ISO-published food safety management system standard that FSSC 22000 builds on, and a cold store can hold it directly rather than through the FSSC wrapper. Any of these four, BRCGS S&D, FSSC 22000, SQF, or ISO 22000, is a legitimate food-safety signal; ask which one, at which site, under which current issue number.
What to ask instead of reading the logo wall
The practical fix is a short, specific question set rather than a scan of certification badges. Ask which certifications apply to the specific site and specific product class you will actually use, not the company's global capability statement. Ask for the certificate number, issuing body, scope, and expiry date, and check whether it covers storage, distribution, transport, or some combination, since BRCGS S&D and FSSC 22000 both allow scope selection. If a provider cites EU GDP or WHO PQS, ask plainly whether that certification applies to their food-handling operation or to a separate pharma or vaccine-handling operation at the same site, because the two can coexist at one facility without one certifying the other. And treat GCCA references as membership and, where relevant, Certified Cold Carrier status, not as a numbered standard equivalent to ISO or BRCGS.
This distinction matters most at the point of contract, when temperature excursions and product loss turn on whether the facility actually operates food-grade temperature monitoring and recording procedures rather than merely displaying an adjacent certification. Building the right question into your due diligence process protects against a real, recurring error pattern in cold-chain marketing, where a genuine pharma or vaccine standard gets presented as though it were general proof of cold-chain competence. It is not fabricated, and it is not fraudulent. It is simply describing a different product class than the one you are shipping, and the fix is to ask which class before you sign.
Sources
- ISO 23412:2020 standard pageChecked 2026-09-04
- ANSI/ISO 23412:2020 reseller listingChecked 2026-09-04
- BRCGS Storage and Distribution product page (Issue 4)Checked 2026-09-04
- BRCGS Storage and Distribution standard overviewChecked 2026-09-04
- EUR-Lex: EU GDP guidelines 2013/C 343/01Checked 2026-09-04
- gmp-compliance.org on 2013/C 343/01Checked 2026-09-04
- WHO PQS process explainer (Elpro)Checked 2026-09-04
- GCCA About pageChecked 2026-09-04
- GCCA Certified Cold Carrier programmeChecked 2026-09-04
- Codex Alimentarius list of standards (FAO/WHO)Checked 2026-09-04
- Isolocity: FSSC 22000 vs ISO 22000 vs SQF explainerChecked 2026-09-04
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