Dismay as West Coast school lunches set to be made in Hamilton
Next year’s West Coast school lunches will be made in Hamilton and shipped to the coast, the Ministry of Education says.
Local suppliers were told last week that their Ka Ora, Ka Ako, healthy school lunch contracts would not be renewed.
From 2025, lunches will instead be supplied by School Lunch Collective, led by international company Compass Group, nationwide.
Ministry of Education operations and integration hautū (leader) Sean Teddy said all meals would be made in Hamilton and shipped to regional kitchens nationwide, where they would be stored, heated if needed, and delivered to schools.
The locations of the 29 kitchens were still being finalised, he said.
On Friday, local principals expressed dismay about the change. They were unsure how it would work or what extra work it would mean for staff.
We are literally taking out ion the mouth of hungry children to stuff the pockets of the richest.
The biggest element of this story has been hidden and glossed over here.
Exactly.
The food is now processed shit from corporations with appalling track record in food service provision…
We know that the largest school lunch providers, Libelle and Compass, have lost significant numbers of schools in the past year, due to performance issues – with schools opting to go with alternative providers.
…plus we are killing off 75 local food suppliers at a time when we have rising unemployment…
‘Massive blow’: 75 suppliers lose school lunch contracts
Thousands of jobs are on the line as 75 suppliers will lose their school lunch contracts at the end of the year.A consortium led by global catering giant Compass Group won the contract to deliver free school lunches to 176,000 students under a new model.The consortium, which includes Libelle and Gilmours, will deliver lunches or ingredients to schools at $3 a pop, down from up to $8.69 under the current model.Suppliers who have missed out on the contract say the new model is a “massive blow” to their business.
…which in turn kills off the local element of the school food programme, the ability for parents to help out and become engaged, the use of local farms and food grown at school as part of the process.
You know, all the community element that makes this programme so important.
What we have had replaced is shit food from corporations with shit records at providing food.
David Seymour has managed to take a great policy and fuck it up.
The greatest audacity here?
We’ve had to cut these food programmes because this Government needed $2.9billion for Landlords tax loopholes.
We took out of the mouth of children to put into the pockets of the rich.
Our children, living in a land of milk and honey, deserve better than this!
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I worked for Compass once biggest bunch of @holes.
I worked a 13 hour shift and when going home got a call to urgently go to the hospital as my Father was dying, long story short when calling the manager to inform him I wasn’t available the next day I got pressured to work as the other chef was having “A garage sale” and was unavailable, in the end i slammed down the phone saying it wasn’t my problem.
But wait there’s more, despite keeping work updated the Manager had the audacity to leave a long message on my phone during the funeral demanding to know when I was back and when returning was pulled into a disciplinary meeting because “There wasn’t enough baking” on the morning my father died.
Needless too say i quickly told them in explicit terms where to shove their job, never worked for them again.
You could probably work up a few pieces on Compass, the health system, and perceived quality. I mean we all like hospital food, right?
Struggling to keep my breakfast down looking at the photos. Looks like a complete cock up.
Slops meals for kids. Sackings for local businesses and providers, plus according to several Principals, the demise of some “garden to table” programmes where kids were assisted to learn how to grow and cook their own vegetables and doing it via school gardens.
Compass in particular is a notorious crap company as unfortunate aged care and hospital residents well know.
Put all Parliamentary staff and MPs on slops and see how they like it. Journalists just don’t do their job, was the mouthful of slops that David Seymour had on media channels an actual cook/chill meal or specially created? I recall the time Barrack Obama went to Flint Michigan to try and dampen down the community outrage over polluted water supplies, he downed a glass, which was later proven to have been sourced from elsewhere by his aides.
Out of the country for 4 week and …not surprised to come back to this (and a raft of other crap). God, they are so so sooooo predictable, aren’t they? Compass, huh. Wonder how many cushy freebies and job promises went AC**Ts way to choose them? And another massive amount of our hard earned collective profit get siphoned overseas….
If we want to be making cost savings, we should ensure Seymour undergoes gavage daily with one of these new school lunches shoved down his gullet.
There is no need to torture vulnerable children while in the care of the state.
Make the food so bad and unappealing the kids won’t eat it isn’t that the cynical plan. And seemore said it was lovely he needs to set an example and have it daily like the kids.
Is there anyway a school or a collection of schools could opt out of this scheme and organise their own set up? To like make use of local resources and people?
If the stuff’s that good it’ll be in Bellamy’s. Won’t it.
Are you saying you will make sure it is is, Henry?
Plenty of money for tobacco companies, oil and mining companies, banksters and mega-landlords.
The rest can eat cake.
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