A temperature claim is won or lost on the record you kept during the trip. What to monitor, what to record, and which Canadian rules bind a carrier whose only role is hauling.
Key takeaways
Three different measurements get called “the temperature” and confusing them loses claims.
A claim usually turns on the gap between them. Air at set point with warm product at loading means the product was warm when you got it — but only if someone recorded a pulp temperature at pickup. No pulp reading at pickup, and you are arguing about a load you cannot characterise.
Carriers often assume food-safety regulation is the shipper’s problem. Section 20(1) of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations does say the Act and Regulations do not apply to a person whose sole concern in respect of a food commodity is its conveyance — but s.20(2) carves out sections 122 and 123 and subsection 359(3), which continue to apply. Subsection 359(3) is narrower than it sounds — it only authorizes applying the Canada Organic legend to something other than a food commodity for advertising or information purposes, so unless you are marketing an organic hauling service, it is s.122 and s.123 that do the real work on an ordinary load of produce, not the organic legend clause.
Two consequences follow. First, s.122(1)(d) prohibits sending or conveying fresh fruits or vegetables from one province to another except for the persons listed in s.122(2) — which include members in good standing of the Fruit and Vegetable Dispute Resolution Corporation and those moving less than one metric ton per day. If you haul interprovincial produce, check your position against that section before you take the load. The other listed exceptions are narrower than carriers assume: a direct-to-consumer seller only qualifies below $100,000 in produce sold in the previous 12 months, a grower moving produce they grew themselves is exempt outright, and a registered charity is exempt too — but a for-hire carrier moving a third party’s produce fits none of those, which leaves DRC membership or the one-tonne-a-day threshold as the only routes in. Second, s.123(1) lets any person with a financial interest in a damaged or defective produce shipment request a written report from the Minister describing its condition at the time of inspection — a destination inspection your customer may well obtain, and one you will want to be able to answer. That request has procedure attached: s.123(2) requires it to go to the Minister in a form the CFIA president has approved, and s.123(3) puts the burden of making the goods accessible to the inspector on whoever filed the request — so if your customer wants that report, keeping the load available for inspection is an obligation they have to arrange, not one that automatically falls on you as the carrier.
Where you do fall under the operational rules, s.65(1) requires the temperature and humidity in a facility or conveyance to be maintained at levels appropriate for the food, and s.65(2) requires that a cooling system, where necessary to prevent contamination, be equipped with instruments to control, indicate and record temperature and humidity, and that it function as intended. The same subsection also requires the system to be accessible enough to disassemble for cleaning, maintenance or inspection and capable of withstanding repeated cleaning — a unit that logs a perfect trace but cannot pass its own inspection is not compliant either. Note also that “refrigerated” is defined in s.1 as kept at 4°C or less without being frozen — useful when a customer’s instruction says only “keep refrigerated”.
Have a written procedure and follow it, because the claim will be decided on what you did in the next hour, not the next week. Pull over safely and check the unit is running and the set point unchanged. Check for a door left ajar. Photograph the display. Notify dispatch immediately and have dispatch notify the customer in writing before delivery, not after. Record the time of every step.
Notifying the customer during the trip converts a surprise into a joint decision. Many loads that would have been rejected on arrival are accepted on inspection when the customer was told at hour two rather than hour twelve.
Worked example: a claim that did not stick
A load of chilled dairy from Ontario to Nova Scotia arrived with the receiver claiming product was above specification and rejecting a third of the pallets. The claim was for the full pallet value.
The carrier produced a continuous 15-minute trace showing return air between 2°C and 4°C for the whole trip, with two excursions to 8°C lasting under 20 minutes each, both aligned exactly with door-open events at the receiver’s own two-stop delivery. It also produced a pulp temperature of 3°C recorded and initialled on the bill of lading at pickup, and a dispatch note timestamped at the first excursion.
The trace did not prove the product was fine. It proved the excursions occurred during unloading at the consignee’s doors and that the product left the shipper at temperature. That was enough to move the conversation from a freight claim to a handling discussion, which is the realistic best outcome and the reason the pickup pulp reading matters more than any other single record.
It is a record, but it is a weak one against a customer with a continuous digital trace. Where s.65(2) applies, the requirement is that the system be equipped with instruments that control, indicate and record — digital logging satisfies it and is far easier to produce.
Settle it in the contract before the claim. If the shipper supplies the trailer or the telemetry, agree in writing who can pull the trace and within what period, or you will be asking for your own evidence from the party disputing it.
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