Reducing Food Waste in Poultry Cold Chain: A Case Study

Food loss is one of the challenges in Cold Chain (CC), which can lead to serious problems with human safety, environment, and economies around the world. Recently, reducing food loss has drawn public attention; previous studies mostly gave attention to food loss drivers in the retailer-consumer stages of the supply chain. In this study we focused on identifying Food-Loss-Factors (FLF) all over the CC, and developed an approach based on multi criteria decision making methods and fuzzy sets to rank FLF according to their influence on food loss in poultry sector. The first phase concerns the identification of FLFs based on the literature as well as experts opinions in the poultry field. To ensure robust results, the fuzzy Delphi method is utilized to achieve a consistency level greater than 75% among all group members. In the second phase, fuzzy AHP method is applied to weigh the FLFs and rank them accordingly. The outcomes of this research offer decision-makers in the CC sector a valuable guide to formulating efficient strategies aimed at reducing food loss during logistic activities.