49481 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education

Written Question

Published date: 23 Oct 2025

Metadata

Document type:	Written Question
Parliament number:	54
Question number:	49481 (2025)
Question asked:	12 Oct 2025
Member asking:	Hon Willow-Jean Prime
Portfolio:	Associate Minister of Education
Minister replying:	Hon David Seymour
Answer received:	19 Oct 2025
Status:	Question Answered
Reply type:	Reply
Document ID:	WQ_49481_2025
Document guid:	7cbb4ea5-afed-4e8b-9329-3c2419763149

49481 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education: How many, if any, school lunches were wasted during the week of October 7th 2025, expressed as an overall number?

Hon David Seymour: I am advised by the Ministry of Education that surplus counts for meals not eaten at the end of lunch service are being monitored and used for continuous improvement of the programme. One of the external model suppliers, the School Lunch Collective (SLC), publishes surplus meal data on their website daily here: https://www.schoollunchcollective.co.nz/ In the week of 6 October 2025, the SLC delivered 472,803 lunches. Of these lunches, 9.42 percent (44,538) were returned to the SLC as surplus.