A system and method for assessing a supply chain for a perishable product. In various embodiments, the present invention provides a quality code for a perishable product which encodes a plurality of the most important performance metrics of the cold chain for the perishable product, including food quality oriented measures such as cut-to-cool time, transportation quality and accumulated shelf-life loss, and food safety oriented measures such as most probable number range for microorganism growth into a compact, modular and simple to read format.