Keiller McDuff, senior reporter, RNZ
The Ministry for Primary Industries has launched an investigation into School Lunch Collective meals served to children with plastic packaging melted into the contents, one of four food safety investigations underway into the troubled scheme.
The Collective - which provides most of the country's school lunches - has been plagued with problems since it replaced local providers this year.
Murchison Area School principal Andy Ashworth said it's certainly not the first problem he'd had with the School Lunch Collective programme.
He has avoided criticising the quality of the food, wanting to give the companies "a bit of leeway", but said even before the meals with baked-in plastic, the school had an array of issues.
"Lack of meals, wrong meals, over heated meals, under heated meals, too spicy meals, the use of their website and ordering system with the two week delay for any changes, being able to actually get on to the website.. it's just been a bit of a collective nightmare."
Up until last week, finding someone to manage distribution and waste has been the most time-consuming, along with a burgeoning rodent issue as the school waited for days for old containers to be collected.
But on Friday, he faced a new problem - meals that arrived with the plastic film melted on to the top, which he said were at least easier to spot and throw out, but some came with a surprise at the bottom.
"The other ones were students who just ate the meal and as you get near the bottom of it, as you can see with some of the pictures, there were holes and the actual plastic had burnt through and even where it hadn't burnt through, it had melted on the inside, and they would only find that out as they got to the bottom of their meal."
Ashworth says while economies of scale may work in some areas, there was "no way" the meals were coming all the way from Hamilton, via Tapawera where they were reheated, to be delivered to his tiny school more than an hour and a half from Nelson at a cost of three dollars.
He says the school's previous arrangement with a local cafe was "amazing".
Janine Gill and her husband Damien own Beachwoods Cafe.
They had the contract to supply the meals for three years, and were able to take on new staff dedicated just to school lunches.
She says there were strict nutritional criteria they had to meet, with protein and vegetable requirements in every meal.
"They were made fresh each day from fresh ingredients, we used local suppliers wherever we could, local market gardeners from the Tasman area and we went on kid's feedback, if they didn't like a meal, we changed it, we adapted it."
When the cafe lost the contract, Beachwoods had to let staff go, and those families left town, relocating further south.
Gill said that was "tragic".
"I'd have them back in a heartbeat. I had awesome staff working on the programme. It's really sad, but it's a wider effect in these tiny communities than it is in the cities because of the flow on impact."
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said he had made it clear to the School Lunch Collective the situation was unacceptable, and it was investigating how it happened.
"I expect the school to receive a full explanation and an assurance that this will not happen again."
New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said NZFS was aware of and was following up on reports of melted plastic in school lunches.
He said NZFS would discuss the issue with the Ministry of Education and meet the lunch provider Libelle Group, which is one of the three main companies in the School Lunch Collective.
He said NZFS was also looking into three other school lunch food safety issues: the mislabeling of lunches with special dietary requirements in Christchurch , another report of a packaging failure during heating and transportation in Whanganui, and a complaint from a Thames school about lunches being delivered at an unsafe temperature.
Initially, Vincent Arbuckle say NZFS had found "no immediate food safety issues", but when asked to clarify, later acknowledged this was because the mislabelled and low temperature lunches didn't reach students thanks to staff intervention, and that it was still looking into the melted plastic.
Ministry of Education hautū (leader) operations and integration Sean Teddy called the situation "entirely unacceptable", and said concerns raised by the school on behalf of their students and community were "completely justified."
Teddy said the Ministry took all food safety issues very seriously, and was seeking a full account of how the problem had occurred.
He said it was yet to be determined if the food safety issues amounted to a material breach of the Ministry's contract with the School Lunch Collective, but if one was found, a written breach notice would be sent.
