{"id":405754,"date":"2026-04-30T23:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405754\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T23:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:12:09","slug":"school-lunch-complaints-david-seymour-urges-context-after-revelations-of-food-safety-probes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405754\/","title":{"rendered":"School lunch complaints: David Seymour urges \u2018context\u2019 after revelations of food safety probes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Food safety investigations around school lunches have covered foreign matter in the food, as well as undercooked meals.<\/p>\n
The aide memoire goes into further detail about several complaints.<\/p>\n
On March 7, 2025, glass was found in a school lunch meal provided by a third party. Metal foil was found in a lunch on March 17, and chicken was alleged to be undercooked in a pasta meal served on March 20.<\/p>\n
The document also details injuries.<\/p>\n
It states a child was injured after consuming a meal contaminated with perspex on April 2, 2025, leading to a recall of meals. The day after, a child was injured after eating an overheated lunch.<\/p>\n
A document prepared for Minister for Food Safety Andrew Hoggard detailed injuries relating to the lunches scheme.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said metal contamination in food could happen from time to time, and the agency investigated any complaint about it, including in school lunches.<\/p>\n
Arbuckle said the agency worked with businesses and providers to determine the likely cause and \u201csupports the business to implement corrective actions to reduce the likelihood of recurrence\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of this process of continual improvement, NZFS has supported the School Lunch Collective to implement corrective actions and tighter controls to prevent foreign matter contamination in meals,\u201d Arbuckle said.<\/p>\n
Complaints relating to foreign matter metal contamination had fallen since 2025, which Arbuckle said showed controls had been effective in reducing risk.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s education spokeswoman, Ginny Andersen, said it was \u201cunbelievable\u201d how much of a \u201cflop\u201d the Government\u2019s lunches scheme had been.<\/p>\n
Andersen claimed there had been a \u201cdisastrous track record\u201d of overheated lunches, bugs in food, and melted plastic appearing in meals.<\/p>\n
Labour has called for information related to the lunches to be proactively released, saying \u201cparents need that information to know that their children are safe\u201d.<\/p>\n
Seymour said while these incidents sounded disturbing, they were not a breach of the Food Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to be seen in the context of seven out of 12.9 million meals,\u201d he said, and added he expected the food programme to keep improving.<\/p>\n
During the period covered by the Official Information Act response, 12.9 million meals were delivered in full and on time.<\/p>\n
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament\u2019s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Food safety investigations around school lunches have covered foreign matter in the food, as well as undercooked meals.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,682,30701,14158,6284,45609,564,1874,9637,266,8454,10933,1452,51705,1614,111,43,139,69,1118,29538,9527,766,4764,6302,4062,16797,3767,118582,3552],"class_list":["post-405754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-being","tag-complaints","tag-context","tag-david","tag-defending","tag-food","tag-found","tag-glass","tag-government","tag-including","tag-injured","tag-issues","tag-lunch","tag-metal","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-probes","tag-programme","tag-reports","tag-revelations","tag-safety","tag-school","tag-seymour","tag-students","tag-undercooked","tag-urges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405754","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=405754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}