The mother of a girl who ate a mouldy school meal said she is now unwell.
Christchurch parents were horrified after their children ate a contaminated meal from the government’s free school lunches programme.
The School Lunch Collective told RNZ it was investigating a “food quality issue” after mouldy mince was served up to students at Haeata Community Campus on Monday.
The Collective represents Compass Group, which was contracted to provide government-funded lunches for the Christchurch school.
The school, which had students from Years 1 to 13, said a teacher noticed Monday’s lunch was off after they had been distributed to a number of children.
Rebecca Mckenzie, told Morning Report, her 12-year-old daughter Aurora, ate one of the meals on Monday and was now unwell.
“She is not looking good at the moment. She has a very queasy tummy and a temperature of 39, looking really quite sick, I’ll be ringing my doctor once it’s open.”
Mckenzie said her daughter had eaten just over half of the meal before throwing it out.
“She said her one didn’t look mouldy but it tasted very disgusting. She said it looked very undercooked which is quite normal with what they get served there.
“We rely on these meals and to have this is absolutely appalling, but unfortunately David Seymour wanted to cut the budget back and give us these not so nice meals.”
Deputy Prime Minster David Seymour has labelled the principal of the school a “frequent flyer in the media”.
“It will be investigated but I also note this particular principal is a frequent flyer in the media complaining about quite a range of government policies… I think people need that context.”
He said what appeared to have happened was lunches from an earlier day were served to children.
“Whether that happened through the distributor or whether that happened with a mix up at the school is unclear.”
Seymour said there had been no illness as a result – that he knew of.
He said testing was being done to get to the bottom of how it happened.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins criticised Seymour’s response.
“The fact that David Seymour is serving kids mouldy lunches is the problem here, not the fact that the principal is blowing the whistle on it,” Hipkins told RNZ’s Morning Report.
Parent Kalah Balir said her 12-year-old daughter ate half of the meal before realising it was bad.
“She said I was hungry, so I got through half of it, and it was yuck, so I threw it away.
“I’m angry, I’m disgusted, it’s just sick that was served to children. It’s dangerous.
“I don’t hold any fault with the school, as soon as they were alerted to the problem, they did try to fix it, of course, but the meals are sealed for safety reasons.
“The government just needs to do better, our kids do not deserve this.”
Earlier this year, the principal of the Christchurch school asked to get out of a contract with Compass Group following several weeks of problems and “disappointing” service, but this was denied by the government.
Compass Group was not included on a list of providers chosen by the government to provide school lunches in 2026.
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