Fridge temperature rules in Ireland: 5°C for chilled food, -18°C for freezers

Fridges are one of the simplest controls in a kitchen to check, for you and for an HSE Environmental Health Officer, and one of the easiest to let slip. Here are the Irish figures, straight from the FSAI, and how to turn them into a routine your team will actually follow.

The numbers

These are the FSAI's figures for caterers. They apply across the Republic of Ireland. (Northern Ireland is part of the UK and follows UK rules.)

Is 5°C actually the law?

Strictly, the law requires food businesses to maintain the cold chain (Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004). The FSAI explains that the legislation doesn't set storage temperatures for chilled and frozen food in general. Instead, recommended temperatures come from national guides to good practice, and some foods of animal origin have their own limits under Regulation (EC) No 853/2004.

For a restaurant, café or pub kitchen, that distinction rarely matters. 0°C to 5°C for chilled food and -18°C for frozen are the figures in the FSAI's guidance and the Safe Catering Pack, and they're what your EHO will hold you to.

Food temperature vs air temperature

The 5°C figure is about the food. A fridge's air temperature rises every time the door opens, then falls again; the food changes more slowly. That's why a single high air reading on a busy Saturday isn't automatically a disaster, and why a fridge that reads 5°C on the display all day may be holding food warmer than that.

The FSAI's SC2 refrigeration record gives you both options:

To measure the food:

• probe a "dummy" food left in the fridge, such as a sealed pot of water or jelly; or
• take a core or surface temperature of real food (clean and disinfect the probe before and after).

To measure the air:

• put a probe thermometer inside the unit; or
• read the display gauge.

A sensible routine is to read the display at every check and probe a dummy food at least once a day, or whenever the display reading looks off.

Probe or display: which to trust?

Display gauges are useful but they drift, and you can't calibrate most of them. A probe thermometer is the reference. The FSAI advises:

• use a probe accurate to at least ±0.5°C;
• check it at least twice a year: in crushed ice and a little cold water it should read between -0.5°C and +0.5°C; in boiling water, between 99.5°C and 100.5°C;
• if it's out, replace it or send it back for calibration, and keep a spare;
• sanitise it with antibacterial wipes before and after use, and don't let the wipes dry out;
• never use a mercury thermometer in a food area.

Once a month, probe a dummy food in each fridge and compare it with the display. If they disagree by more than a degree or so, trust the probe and get the fridge looked at.

How often to check

The FSAI's SC2 form recommends checking fridge temperatures at least once per day, and notes that some businesses check more often and also record freezer temperatures. The form has an AM and a PM column for every unit, which makes it easy to check twice: once at opening, once before close.

Twice a day is a good default for a restaurant or pub kitchen:

• Opening check catches a fridge that failed overnight before you serve anything from it.
• Closing check catches a fridge struggling after a busy service, while someone is still there to move the stock.

Add an extra check after a delivery, after a power cut, or any time a fridge has been loaded with a lot of stock. Whatever frequency you choose, write it into your Safe Catering plan and make the records match it.

What to do when a fridge is out of range

Write down what you found and what you did, every time. A reading of 9°C with nothing next to it is worse than no reading at all. The FSAI's own HACCP example is a fridge at 10°C because of a technical fault: discard the food and repair the fridge until it holds 5°C again.

A practical sequence for a kitchen:

1. Re-check. Probe a dummy food or the food itself. A high air reading straight after a delivery may be the door, not the fridge.
2. Find out how long. Check the last good reading. If you can't say when the fridge went over 5°C, assume the worst.
3. Decide on the food. High-risk foods (cooked meats, dairy, cooked rice, prepared salads, desserts) that have been above 5°C for an unknown or long time should be thrown out. If in doubt, throw it out.
4. Move what's safe. Transfer food that is still at 5°C or below to a working fridge.
5. Fix the cause. Door seal, overloading, blocked vents, a thermostat knocked, or a fault that needs an engineer.
6. Record it. Reading, time, what you discarded, what you moved, what you fixed, and who did it.

The FSAI's power outage guidance gives a useful marker: food in the fridge must be kept at 0°C to 5°C, and if it's likely that chilled food was above 5°C for longer than 4 hours, it must be discarded. For freezers, fully defrosted meat, fish or dairy should be discarded; food still frozen below -18°C can stay frozen.

Habits that keep fridges in range

• Don't overload. The FSAI warns that packing a fridge with warm food raises the temperature of everything in it.
• Cool before you chill. Get cooked food cooled and into the fridge within 2 hours, using the methods in our guide to hot holding, cooling and reheating.
• Defrost in the fridge. The FSAI says the fridge is the best place to defrost food, as the surface stays at 5°C or below. Don't defrost under the cold tap in a sink.
• Raw below ready-to-eat. Store ready-to-eat food above or apart from raw food.
• Keep doors shut. Plan the line so the reach-in isn't open all service.
• Leave space for air. Blocked vents mean warm spots.
• Service the units. A fridge that's worked harder every summer will fail eventually.

A fridge check you can copy

Add a monthly line for "dummy probe vs display" and a twice-yearly line for probe calibration. The FSAI's own SC2 sheet (free to download) does the same job if you prefer the official form; see our guide to the Safe Catering record sheets.

Keeping fridge records without the clipboard

Paper sheets work until they don't: the sheet gets wet, the AM column is blank on a Monday, or nobody can find March when the EHO asks.

In ShiftComplete, every fridge and freezer is set up with its own min and max. Staff log a reading on their phone or the tablet behind the bar in a few seconds. Anything outside the range is flagged on the manager's dashboard straight away, named and timestamped, with an optional photo of the probe. The weekly report shows every breach, and a 7-day rolling view is ready for an EHO visit. It helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see; you stay responsible for the fridges themselves.

ShiftComplete costs €1.99 per active staff member per month, free for 60 days, no card and no contract. Start a free trial.