Just for curiousity, I've done some !!SCIENCE!! on the way the new food-rotting system would work.
With the [HEATDAM_POINT:10015] (that is, same as the underground, at 10015°U = 8°C), inside food items will take roughly three weeks to completely "rot" away. Before that, you'll see the items progressively wear out like xClothesx before disappearing altogether. They don't all rot in unison, the individual rates appear to be random. I haven't tested to see, if the [UNROTTED] reaction token also rejects damaged xItemsx.
Rotting is much faster outside; in tropical climates (10070°U=38.9°C) meat can rot away in all of three days! The neat thing is that as said before, the rate of decay depends on temperature, even if it's a tiny bit fast. It makes tropical biomes all the more challenging in early-game, but the abundance of tropical plant foodstuff's in GavJ's conception would balance this later on.
The biggest problem with implementing this is that butchering products are the same as live tissues, and naively changing the HEATDAM_POINT will make creatures die instantly! The only workaround I can think of is setting most creature's HOMEOTHERM to an even lower temperature. It's a pretty shoddy solution, but it's the least noticeable to the gameplay and there isn't much better if this is done with just raw-modding.