Palmerston North school seeks new lunch provider after plastic found in meal

Associate Education Minister David Seymour. Photo / RNZ

By Midday Report of RNZ

A Palmerston North school wants to change school lunch providers after a child bit into a hard piece of plastic in their lunch.

The school is on the old school lunch programme, however, their supplier is Compass, who is the main supplier for the new programme.

Milson School principal Tracy Thorn told Midday Report they’ve had ongoing issues with the programme and are fed up with the poor quality of the food.

She said they had had a range of problems - which occurred last year before the new school lunch programme was implemented - including rotten fruit, not enough food and even a cockroach in the bottom of a delivery box.

“There’s been some significant things that have gone on within school lunches themselves,” she said. “We’ve had lunches that have been opened… we’ve had children with allergies and those things have been included in their lunches.”

The girl who bit into the hard plastic went to the dentist, and Thorn said luckily she had not cracked any teeth.

“She does still have quite a sore jaw so we are keeping an eye on that, as are her whanau.”

A School Lunch Collective spokesperson said they were advised on Wednesday about an issue at a participating school as part of the Ka Ora Ka Ako Healthy School Lunch programme.

“A student found a piece of foreign matter in their meal. We contacted the school straight away to find out what happened so we could take immediate action.

“All associated meals are on hold and we informed New Zealand Food Safety, which will work to determine where the foreign matter came from and what needs to be put in place to prevent this happening again.”

The Collective said it had zero tolerance for any risks created with its meals, and was taking it extremely seriously.

“We sincerely apologise for any concern this has created.”

Under the new school lunch programme, introduced this year by the coalition government to cut costs, there are now just three main providers making the lunches.

Milton School wants to use the nearby Freyberg High School, which makes its own lunches, but said that was not allowed.

“We tried to move to them to keep it local… I contacted the senior advisor for supplier partnerships and we were given a ‘no’.

A recent analysis found school lunches are failing nutrition standards and giving students only half the energy they should.

Doctors and researchers at the Public Health Communication Centre analysed the nutritional value of the School Lunch Collective meals which were brought in as a cost-saving scheme by the government this year. They found the meals were falling well short of expected energy requirements.

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