Associate Education Minister David Seymour on the ongoing school lunches saga and his missed meeting with Education Minister Erica Stanford. Video / Mark Mitchell
A message from the Ministry of Education to education peak bodies, published on social media by education union NZEI Te Riu Roa this afternoon, said lunch provider Compass had been told not to use those packaged meals again because they were not for use in commercial ovens.
The message said the ministry had asked the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to expand its investigation into the school lunch programme to include heating practices.
Education union NZEI Te Riu Roa posted this message from the Ministry of Education. Photo / Supplied
The note posted by the union reported the ministry as saying: “We have instructed Compass that these particular types of packaged meals cannot be served again in the programme, as they were never intended to be reheated in a commercial oven.
“We have also directed the School Lunch Collective to publish visual evidence daily of the quality of meals produced across all kitchens,” the note ministry added.
Meanwhile, a Bay of Plenty school says its school lunches have been delivered so hot that containers have exploded.
Te Puke Intermediate School says its lunches were delivered so hot that containers exploded.
Te Puke Intermediate deputy Principal Stephen Knightly told Checkpoint the Watties flexi lunches are so overheated and heavy he has had to buy rubber gardening gloves to remove the hot lunches from the food bins they are delivered in.
He said one student “chomped down on a meatball with plastic”.
Knightly said the sheer weight of the meals squashes the ones underneath and one day looked like a “cottage pie massacre”. He said he spent seven hours between Monday and Wednesday this week cleaning up the mess.
He has emailed the Lunch Collective regularly and even visited the kitchen to pick the meals one day to see the issues for himself.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
