• A dead larva has been found in a school meal at a West Auckland school.
• The Minister in charge of the school lunch programme, David Seymour, says MPI will get to the bottom of it.
• The Labour Party says it is a “new low” for the school programme.

More questions are being asked about the school lunch programme after a dead larva was found in a meal.

Photos of the chicken, potato and vegetable meal delivered to a West Auckland school show a dead larva, roughly twice the length of a fingernail, resting on a potato.

The minister in charge of the school lunch programme, David Seymour, said the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) 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,” he told 1News.

“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.”

The Herald has approached the School Lunch Collective for comment.

A larva was found in a lunch from the School Lunch Collective meal at a school in West Auckland.

Labour’s education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime said the latest incident was a “new low” for the school lunch programme.

“First it was exploding lunches, then frozen lunches, then it was plastic and glass, now it’s a bug,” she said.

“This is an insult to our students. Our children deserve better than this.

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“David Seymour promised all issues would be fixed come start of Term 2, but they’re not.”

Prime said New Zealand Food Safety must be thorough in its investigation.

“Finding an insect in a school lunch is an appalling further drop in standards,” she said.

“If David Seymour’s shocking track record on school lunches is anything to go by, once he becomes Deputy Prime Minister we’re in for some more nasty surprises.”

The school lunch programme has been beset by multiple issues since launching in a new form earlier this year, including problem deliveries, plastic melting into a meal, and one child suffering second-degree burns from a hot lunch.