cold chains were already standard before connected fridges, one doesn't mandate the other. The issue is most of all not remote monitoring but remote management.

I don't know what "cold chain people" are, at the scale of supermarkets you permanently have refridgeration for different groups of consumables.

I'm not aware of a scenario where e.g. fish is being shipped, and the originating logistics remotely sets the temperature of a fridge at the destination.