School lunch woes: Halal issues and food waste hit West Auckland schools

By Louise Ternouth, RNZ

After weeks of late, unsuitable or unsavoury school lunches, two West Auckland schools had their first opportunity to speak to an actual person from the group behind the revamped lunch programme.

Massey Primary School has been receiving Pita Pit wraps or sandwiches for the past nine days and Lincoln Heights has had butter chicken for 11 days out of 17.

They are two of scores of schools across the country that have had issues with the new programme, introduced by the coalition Government to save taxpayers $130 million a year while maintaining nutritional standards.

It was day nine of Pita Pit lunches for Massey Primary School in West Auckland. Delivery was an hour late but this time it was chicken teriyaki on rice.

There was only one certified halal meal, but the school has 50 halal students.

Butter chicken lunch from Lincoln Heights school (left) and chicken teriyaki lunch at Massey Primary School. Photo / RNZ / Louise Ternouth

Bruce Barnes said on Monday the only option was ham sandwiches, which meant another trip down the road to get pizzas for their 50 halal students.

That brought the schools' total spend for halal food to $780.

Even though Tuesday’s chicken option is “halal friendly”, it is not halal certified. Barnes said their Muslim students cannot eat it.

“We’ve notified our community of this and said that if they want to provide their own, to be sure, please do so.

“But apart from that, we’ve got to then go out and source our own meals for our students.”

The school has now employed someone to help out with the lunches with funding from the Ministry of Education.

But this only covers two and a half hours a day, half the time it takes to sort, deliver and clean up the lunches.

Some students told RNZ it was nice to have a break from Pita Pit wraps and sandwiches.

At Lincoln Heights Primary, it was jalapeno curry with rice for lunch, a welcome change from butter chicken.

But principal Leisha Brynes said when the jalapeno curry dish was served a few weeks ago the students found it inedible.

“A few weeks ago we had a jalapeno curry which no children could eat, jalapenos are not overly child friendly.”

On Tuesday lunchtime 300 out of 500 lunches were uneaten by the end of lunch.

Ever since the school requested halal-friendly meals after receiving macaroni and cheese with ham in it they have been served butter chicken, yesterday was day 13.

“If you can imagine having the same meal for 13 times in a row, it’s not going down overly well.

“The kids are over it the staff are over trying to get our kids to eat and I think what’s breaking our hearts is we know that a number of these children actually need to eat the lunch.”

Brynes estimated up to 50% of their lunches were going to waste and only 16% were being eaten completely.

The lunch programme is run by the School Lunch Collective, whose largest provider is food company Compass.

On Tuesday, the Compass area manager went to Massey Primary to meet with Barnes and Brynes to hear their concerns.

The manager declined to be interviewed by RNZ’s Checkpoint.

After the meeting, Brynes said things were not any clearer and they did not know when they would get new options or when the supply issues would be fixed.

She said discussions needed to be at a higher level for any meaningful change to occur.

“If we are failing schools, we’re held to account, Who’s holding these people to account?”

Barnes was equally unimpressed.

“Well, the feedback was, from her point of view she has taken notes she has listened, and she will then escalate it.

“She said, she couldn’t promise anything would change, but she would just pass it on.”

The principals had been unable to speak directly with the School Lunch Collective, having to instead raise their concerns with the Ministry of Education.

Barnes said they were provided with a new Compass email address and were told to send through an invoice to cover the $780 the school has spent to cover unsuitable lunches.

He was unable to get answers on how long they would be receiving lunches from Pita Pit for or why they were only receiving one certified halal lunch and where that lunch came from.

At the end of the day, 60% of the chicken teriyaki lunches had gone to waste at Massey Primary.

The driver who delivered the lunches told RNZ it would be back to Pita Pit wraps for the school today.

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