{"id":163642,"date":"2025-12-02T02:58:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T02:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/163642\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T02:58:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T02:58:04","slug":"principal-of-school-at-centre-of-mouldy-school-lunch-fiasco-hurt-by-david-seymours-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/163642\/","title":{"rendered":"Principal of school at centre of mouldy school lunch fiasco hurt by David Seymour\u2019s comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt will be investigated but I also note this particular principal is a frequent flyer in the media complaining about quite a range of government policies… I think people need that context.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Burrows said she refused to get involved in a public stoush but added: \u201cI am an educationist, not a politician. I am here to advocate for this community\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must admit I was a little bit hurt to be described in that matter from a person who holds a significant portfolio in education and is, at the moment, the Deputy Prime Minister,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever met Mr Seymour personally or had a conversation with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HaeataHaeata Community Campus cafe staff member Elise Darbyshire (left) and principal Peggy Burrows (right). Photo \/ RNZ, Adam Burns<\/p>\n

MPI involved<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), confirmed it would carry out checks of lunches at the school on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Food safety said it was working with the Ministry of Education<\/a> and the National Public Health Service to establish the facts.<\/p>\n

It said there was no evidence of any wider food safety issue at this stage.<\/p>\n

Child unwell<\/p>\n

The mother of a girl who ate one of the mouldy lunches said she was \u201cappalled\u201d by the situation and her daughter was now unwell.<\/p>\n

Rebecca McKenzie, told Morning Report, her 12-year-old daughter Aurora, ate one of the meals on Monday and was now unwell.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is not looking good at the moment. She has a very queasy tummy and a temperature of 39, looking really quite sick, I\u2019ll be ringing my doctor once it\u2019s open.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RebeccaRebecca says David Seymour wanted to cut the budget back and give us these not-so-nice meals. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

McKenzie said her daughter had eaten just over half of the meal before throwing it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said her one didn\u2019t look mouldy but it tasted very disgusting. She said it looked very undercooked which is quite normal with what they get served there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe rely on these meals and to have this is absolutely appalling, but unfortunately David Seymour wanted to cut the budget back and give us these not-so-nice meals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the principal of the Christchurch school asked to get out of a contract with Compass Group following several weeks of problems and \u201cdisappointing\u201d service, but this was denied by the Government.<\/p>\n

Compass Group was not included on a list of providers chosen by the Government to provide school lunches in 2026.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt will be investigated but I also note this particular principal is a frequent flyer in the media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1975,3595,1550,5782,6284,93587,14046,51705,48459,111,43,139,69,1118,1642,29192,4062,82575],"class_list":{"0":"post-163642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-at","9":"tag-by","10":"tag-centre","11":"tag-comments","12":"tag-david","13":"tag-fiasco","14":"tag-hurt","15":"tag-lunch","16":"tag-mouldy","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-of","22":"tag-online","23":"tag-principal","24":"tag-school","25":"tag-seymours"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}