An Inside Look at Food Service in Antarctica

Palmer Station receives two food deliveries a year, which are shipped from Port Hueneme to Chile and then transported, typically by a USAP-leased research vessel to Palmer Station. The food order is approximately 5 percent of the size of McMurdo’s food order. “Palmer personnel also have the luxury of ordering freshies from Chile every six to eight weeks, which are delivered by boat,” Senty notes.

Temperature Control

Not surprisingly, and obviously, temperature control figures significantly in the USAP’s food safety protocols.

“We have three different temperature environments we store food in, namely ‘keep frozen,’ ‘can be frozen,’ and ‘do not freeze,’” Senty relates. “There is virtually no ‘keep refrigerated’ storage, with the exception of the kitchen walk in coolers.”

“Can be frozen” products are suitable for USAP’s non-temperature regulated warehousing. “At our South Pole Station this equals frozen 365 days a year,” Senty mentions. “The all-time record high temperature at the South Pole is 9 degrees Fahrenheit and temperatures rarely ever get out of the negatives. At McMurdo and Palmer Stations, the temperature can change from 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to 50-plus degrees above zero Fahrenheit, depending on the time of year.”

“Do not freeze” products are stored in heated warehousing at all three USAP stations.

“Keep frozen” products at the South Pole have the same status as “can be frozen,” Senty notes. “We have a freezer warehouse in McMurdo and we use freezer shipping containers at Palmer,” he says. “When the food orders show up on the vessels, all of this space is quickly filled to capacity.”

“We spend added time tracking the temperature of foods that have been cooked and not eaten during the scheduled meal period,” Senty points out. “Our blast-chiller at McMurdo gets used extensively and we maintain temperature logs for all products going into and out of the chiller. As products are repurposed, we continue to label and track those products to ensure they have never been in the temperature danger zone for an unacceptable period of time throughout the life of that product.”

Senty emphasizes that, at the three U.S. stations in Antarctica, the first food safety rule is always “when in doubt, throw it out.” “With that said, repurposing food when it’s safe to do so saves the program a great deal of money every year,” he says.

Just like all the waste from the USAP, the food waste is repackaged and loaded onto the container ship to be shipped to California for disposal, Senty relates, adding that it takes two days to completely on load the vessel for the return trip from McMurdo. “Food waste is kept frozen on the way back to the states to prevent the food from rotting during transport,” Senty says. “The cost of shipping food waste back to the states frozen is substantial. So minimizing food waste is a major focus for our food service team.”

Leake, doing business as Food Safety Ink, is a food safety consultant, auditor, and award-winning journalist based in Wilmington, N.C. Reach her at [email protected].