An investigation into reports of live flies being found in meals provided to schools is “unable to proceed” due to a lack of substantive information, NZ Food Safety says.
An investigation into the claims was launched in mid-March after NZ Food Safety “received a complaint about flies in school lunches”.
In an update to 1News today, deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said the agency had been “unable to progress” its investigation.
“We made enquiries, but information was not available to substantiate the complaint,” he said.
The new programme, introduced this year by the coalition government to reduce the cost of the one previously introduced by Labour, has been fraught with issues.
Some schools have complained about meals arriving late, or even not at all. Other schools have complained about “frozen” and “burnt” school lunches with plastic melted into its contents, with many children opting to skip on the meals entirely. One Gisborne school has been feeding the lunches to their pet pig.
One of the scheme’s three main providers, Libelle – which provided around 125,000 meals a day – went into liquidation last month and subsequently agreed to sell its lunch operation to Compass Group NZ, the main lunch provider.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour, who is behind the programme, met with Education Minister Erica Stanford last month to discuss “a range of issues” around the school lunch programme. Seymour has repeatedly defended the scheme, telling Jack Tame on Q&A earlier last month: “There’s a lot of people who say they enjoy these meals. Many people say they’re better than what they had last year.”
