Is it a worm, a maggot — or a not very hungry caterpillar?
That’s the question being asked after a dead larva was found in a Government supplied school lunch at a high school in west Auckland this month.
Labour’s deputy leader and the MP for Kelston, Carmel Sepuloni, said the presence of the immature insect raised serious concerns about food safety in the Government’s school lunch programme.
“Well, I was shocked to receive photos of a maggot in one of the student’s food,” Sepuloni told 1News. “Now we see that maggots are on the menu for our children and it’s not good enough.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the School Lunch Collective said: “We are aware that MPI is investigating an insect that was found in a meal delivered to a school, however we can’t comment until the investigation is complete”.
It’s understood the School Lunch Collective didn’t believe it was a maggot but, rather, a worm from a potato.
However, a bug expert who reviewed the photos of the dead larva said they were confident it was a caterpillar, and would have been well and truly cooked and safe to eat.
The Minister in charge of the school lunch programme, David Seymour, said the Ministry for Primary Industries would get to the bottom of it.
“Let’s do the investigation and find out the facts and, if there needs to be a fix, we’ll do a fix.
“They investigate everything and, often times, it turns out to be a false alarm so let’s take it seriously until we know the facts.”
New Zealand Food Safety deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said the agency was looking into the complaint and have sent the dead larva away for testing.
“The testing should confirm what type of larva this is and help determine when it may have got into the food.
“Although NZFS is looking into this complaint, at this stage there is no evidence that this is a wider food safety issue with the School Lunch Collective.”
Labour’s education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime called the latest incident to come out of the school lunch programme “a new low”.
“First it was exploding lunches, then frozen lunches, then it was plastic and glass, now it’s a bug. This is an insult to our students. Our children deserve better than this,” she said.
“David Seymour promised all issues would be fixed come start of Term 2, but they’re not.”
