David Seymour speaks with Heather du Plessis-Allan about mouldy school lunches. Video / Newstalk ZB
MPI has concluded mouldy school lunches served at a Christchurch school were likely left out for days and given to children as the result of “human error”.
New Zealand Food Safety deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said the “weight of evidence suggests” staff members at Haeata Community Campus mistakenly distributed thecontaminated food.
In a media statement released earlier today, Haeata principal Peggy Burrows said CCTV “clearly shows the Compass Group delivery driver delivering eight cambro [food storage] boxes” to the school last Thursday, denying claims an extra one was left at the school.
“If a cambro box had been left behind it would have been noticed and uplifted by the PFM property staff.”
But Arbuckle said “the number of boxes going in and out of the school on any given day does not provide sufficient evidence that all of the leftover lunches are accounted for in this case”.
Staff at the school told MPI an unknown number of the boxes were kept on-site to deliver food to students, with eight boxes being delivered and nine collected last Thursday.
“Since all of the contaminated lunches were from boxes in the cafeteria, we think it most likely that some food intended for consumption last week was mistakenly made available on Monday.”
While the investigation is continuing, Arbuckle noted that no other schools receiving meals from the distribution centre were affected by the mould.
Earlier this week a food poisoning warning was issued after several school children at the Christchurch school ate lunches covered in thick mould.
Burrows today claimed that no students had reported suffering from food poisoning, with current sickness “in line with regular patterns of absenteeism for this time of the school year”.
She had earlier told media some students had fallen sick from the food.
The lunches served at Haeata Community Campus were covered in a thick layer of mould.
In a lunchtime statement, Paul Harvey, a spokesperson for the School Lunch Collective representing Compass Group, said the school didn’t return one of the heated containers last Thursday that meals are delivered in.
“There were nine cambro boxes of the savoury mince and potatoes meal delivered to Haeata Community Campus on Thursday, November 27, however, records show only eight were returned to us.
“One cambro box has sat at ambient temperatures at the school since that date.
“[On Monday] more than 73,000 lunches of the same recipe were served nationwide, with no concerns raised by any other school.”
In messages seen by the Herald, Burrows told a Food Safety officer that video footage only showed eight cambro boxes being delivered by and returned to Compass.
She requested clarification on Food Safety’s findings.
But a spokesperson for the School Lunch Collective tonight said Compass Group follows “robust processes” when dealing with surplus meals.
“We collect the cambro boxes given to us by the school each day. They are returned to the CPK [Central Production Kitchen] and put in our different waste management streams.
“We clean the cambro boxes as well as the vans that deliver the food – every day. At the end of the night there is no food left in any of our vans or cambro boxes.”
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