MPI confirms complaint of flies in school lunches
"It was revolting"
A complaint of flies found inside a school lunch provided by David Seymour’s school lunch programme has been made to the Ministry for Primary Industries.
New Zealand Food Safety deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle confirmed that at least one complaint had been made about flies in school lunches delivered to a school which I have chosen not to name.
“New Zealand Food Safety has received a complaint about flies in school lunches. We are working with the Ministry of Education in the first stages of looking into this complaint to establish the facts,” Arbuckle confirmed.
After its main food manufacturer, Libelle went into liquidation, the School Lunch Collective began importing meals from Australia. It’s not known if the flies were from Australia.
A source with a family member at the school said - “The child opened a meal yesterday and a couple of flies came out. There were kids who had already said they didn't want it because it looked disgusting.”
“We don’t know where the flies are from. Some schools have meals coming from Australia - what if something gets through?”.
“It’s truly revolting. Just ghastly that we know poor kids are having live insects in their food and now farmers are having their livelihood threatened.”
It follows countless reports of lunches so hot they burnt a student leading to them being hospitalised, so inedible they were fed to the school pig, and food frozen and unable to be eaten. Students at another school were left with steam burns from lunches, other schools have not had lunches delivered or delivered too late, and nearly a third of schools receiving lunches have contacted the Ministry of Education with queries and complaints. There have also been issues with lunches for Muslim students, with one school reporting only one certified halal meal arrived for 50 halal students. This followed The School Lunches Collective admitting meals were not certified as halal.
The teachers union NZEI last week surveyed more than 200 principals and teachers and found 80 percent were ‘not satisified’ with meals provided by the School Lunch Collective.
The Ministry of Education said they are “working closely with NZ Food Safety”.
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