So, the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) has been busy investigating 17 food safety complaints in the School Lunch Collective’s lunch programme during term one of this year. And get this, 12 of those investigations are still ongoing. That’s a lot of investigations, right? Well, apparently, it’s the same number as MPI investigated across seven years under the old programme. Talk about a sudden increase in activity!
Now, the Ministry of Education is the one receiving all these initial reports about food safety incidents, complaints, and queries from schools. And when things get really serious or there’s a lot of public interest, they pass the buck up to New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS). It’s like a game of hot potato, but with food safety concerns instead.
Education officials are really trying to show everyone that they’re serious about this stuff. They’re taking a stricter approach to referring food safety incidents up to MPI. It’s all about assuring parents and schools that they’re not messing around when it comes to keeping kids safe.
And get this, they’re even referring complaints to MPI that wouldn’t have been a big deal under the old programme. Like, for real? I mean, we’re talking about incidents involving clumpy sauce, a stray chicken bone, and frozen buns. Not really sure why this matters, but apparently, these things are a big deal now.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is out here saying that some of these issues are being blown out of proportion. He’s talking about incidents like a student getting burnt from an overheated lunch or finding melted plastic in their food. It’s like a food safety nightmare out there.
Now, MPI and NZFS have already wrapped up five of these investigations. They found stuff like broken seals on food, mislabelled special dietary meals, and even a student biting into a piece of glass. Ouch! That’s gotta hurt.
But wait, there’s more. There’s this whole thing at Milson School where they found a piece of glass in a nachos lunch. The principal, Tracy Thorn, is waiting to hear back about it. Apparently, it was tempered glass, not plastic like they originally thought. Whoops!
Thorn even found a piece of glad wrap in a sandwich at one point. It’s like a food safety scavenger hunt over there. She’s not too happy about the situation, saying the standards have really gone downhill. And honestly, who can blame her?
But hey, the NZFS deputy director-general, Vincent Arbuckle, says there haven’t been any reports of illness from all these investigations. So, I guess that’s a silver lining, right? At least nobody’s getting sick from all this mess.
Seymour is out here saying that food safety has actually improved under the new programme. He’s trying to spin it like things are getting better. But with 63 food safety complaints in the first term alone, it’s hard to see the bright side.
The Ministry of Education got 63 food safety complaints, incidents, and queries in term one of 2025. That’s a big jump from last year. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a lot of complaints, right? But Seymour is saying that things are actually better than they were before. I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.
Overall, it’s clear that officials are really cracking down on food safety issues in the School Lunch Collective programme. They want everyone to know that they’re on top of things. And hey, maybe they are. But with all these investigations and complaints, it’s hard to say for sure.
But hey, at least they’re serving more than 5.5 million meals to kids around the country. So, there’s that. Let’s just hope they’re a bit more careful about what’s in those meals next time.