31503 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education

31503 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education: How many, if any, school lunches that were meant to serve specific dietary or religious needs errantly included inappropriate ingredients, such as ham in a vegetarian meal, during the week of June 16th 2025?

Hon David Seymour: I am advised by the Ministry of Education (the Ministry) that around 742,000 meals were delivered in the four-day week of 16 June, across the 1011 schools in the programme. The Ministry does not track dietary meals across all suppliers and internal meal providers in the programme on a daily basis. The School Lunch Collective (SLC), which deliver meals to 43% (436) of schools in the programme, provides the Ministry with daily dietary information delivered to schools. In the four-day week of 16 June 2025, all the 45,761 specific dietary or religious meals were delivered by the SLC. Of the total meals (420,441) delivered by the SLC in this week, 24 schools received meals late or on lunchtime. This was due to low staffing in one Auckland central processing kitchen on 17 June, and slight travel delays on 18 June where meals arrived between 5 – 10 minutes before the school’s lunchtime (i.e. recorded late due to arriving after the agreed delivery timing). This is also my response to written parliamentary question 31504, 31505, 31506 and 31509 (2025).