There have been complaints that the food served at Christchurch Uni was already poor and portion sizes tiny…
Hungry Canterbury University students win bid for more food
“Does anyone have food? Some people are super hungry.”
That’s a text message often sent between University of Canterbury students staying in student accommodation after dark, when dinner time has finished – where second servings have not been allowed.
University Hall has 561 student residents living in its fully catered facilityproviding breakfast, lunch and dinner. It costs between $400-500 a week depending on the type of room, which is between $18,000 to $21,000 annually for the semester year.
Hungry students, some who stashed food in their rooms and others who have lost weight, have successfully appealed to serve their own portion sizes in a bid for more kai.
..now the food is poisoning them…
Outbreak of student sickness at Canterbury University hall blamed on food poisoning
An evening meal at a University of Canterbury hall of residence is being blamed after hundreds of students have fallen ill.
One University Hall student said more than 200 students were stricken by vomiting or “extreme diarrhoea” after eating a chicken dinner on Sunday.
“There were queues at one building’s toilets at 4am due to the large amount of students experiencing this,” she said.
She said students were vomiting out their windows because “they couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time”.
Other students told the Press they were suffering from “restless bathroom journeys” and multiple students were sick in the toilets.
…my question is are David Seymour’s new food in school provider, Compass Group, who have a poor record when it comes to providing food….
…I asked AI if Compass Group provided food for University live-in meals and it said yes…
…I’ve searched Compass Group and can’t find a direct link to them and the Uni accomodation but if it exists, it should be immediately investigated.
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It’s shocking this should never have happened, feel sorry for the students, rent seems awfully high for such sub standard meals, compass or whoever it was should be shut down
Absolutely Martyn. Compass and their “cook/chill” shipped meals are bad news as NZ aged care and hospital residents already well know. It is cruel indeed to rip live in students with high prices for inadequate and dangerous ‘food substitutes’. Sympathy goes out to the young people affected, Compass’ arse needs to be nailed to the wall along with Seymour’s.
Slops meals for school kids also are disgusting–the plan is to provide inadequate food, then cancel free school meals when consumption drops.
Industrial scale food inevitably causes problems one way or another. Food should be sourced and cooked locally where possible. Some schools were running “garden to table” programmes where kids learnt to grow vegetables in school gardens and then cook it and eat it. Several Principals have said Seymours slops meals will see these initiatives end.
Time was when halls of residence – previously called student hostels – cooked their own meals on site. Mine did. Schools all over England still do, and it’s good hearty food, but this country, whatever it’s called now, can’t even manage to do that. My first query about Christchurch’s sick students was also to wonder who’s supplying the food. Hospitals ship in food en masse now too, and patients – oops- customers- could be equally at risk from food poisoning.
I spent a year in Canterbury’s Uni Hall in the late 70s, the catering to a similar number of students was in-house and it delivered wholesome large meals, often seconds offered, only drawback being that menus were a little NZ-1970’s unimaginative.
This was well before the Dodger mutilated the economy but why it ever needed to be contracted to an international monster corporation is beyond me.
Richard Christie. Ditto at Otago. Lots of spaghetti and shepherd’s pie straight from the kitchen, and we also got to eat the food of the no-shows, so we were never hungry. It’s mind boggling that in a country with good primary produce that students paying big bucks with big loans should be hungry, and food poisoning at exam time is dreadful.
Seymoure will have the parents arrested because the kids will be classed as truants .
@ gw. I wonder how you would class us lot? Those of us who fail to act and there are a lot of us.
We know what’s [going on ] yet we fail to act. What, is that about…
Professor Stanley Milgram had a theory on that. Here it is.
The Milgram Experiment.
Commonly, people fail to act because others fail to act so you get this kind of loop of inaction where everyone ends up waiting on who’s going to go first to see what will happen and inevitably nothing happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
What we’re seeing in our politics, right now, is a dangerous precedent. The natzo’s who’ve been the real power now since 1936 has us by the balls. We don’t know how to resist the cunning means of control they project on us. We’re a rich and beautiful country and that’s pretty fucking obvious but yet we get bullied and misused by a small clique of wealthy psychopaths who are far from acting the interests of those of us who pay them to best take care of us.
You’re not getting quality food in education because ‘they’ won’t let us have that. ‘They’ instead have crimes to cover over and so we can never be allowed to come to understand just how well off we really are.
14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a $50 million dollar starting fortune and that’s after tax and four now Australian owned banks anz, asb, bnz and westpac, being the second most profitable banks in the world are taking $180.00 after tax a second 24/7/365 and we have no idea what to do about that despite knowing there are 600,000 people living in poverty and 200,000 kids going hungry and our public infrastructure’s going down the fucking gurgler. What the fuck’s wrong with us? That’s a good question.
RNZ
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/532898/police-minister-denies-claims-children-left-on-their-own-following-police-raids-in-opotiki
And yet:
TDB
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/11/04/breaking-explosive-post-cabinet-luxon-police-left-baby-alone-in-opotiki-raids/
Another attempt to slash the numbers of bottom feeders
You would think that you could make a OIA request but of course you can’t- University Hall is not, of course, run by the University of Canterbury, but by an Australian property investment corporation. I believe it originally was run in the interests of the residents but was sold to foreigners in the 90s.
I understand that College House is the only hall of residence with any independence left. The former Bishop Julius Hall was rebranded by a corrupt former board to ‘Arkady Hall’ in an attempt to build towards selling it to UniLodge like University Hall was. I understand alumni managed to block that attempt, but it’s only a matter of time.
I realized after posting that I should apologize to former residents of Rochester & Rutherford. You are seen (studying too much in the library or back in your room), you exist.
quelle surprise…
listeria is welcome in NZ
When a person looks like a cock, and then goes the step further, acts like a cock, I think it’s alright to call them a cock. Where did he and Simeon come from, expecting to ‘get on’?! Doofuses.
The catering is in house so no story here just bad food management . The cooked chicken was not cooled quick enough.
There is an ad running by the Compass group for a catering assistant for Canterbury university, so it seems they are the same Caterers the poor schools are going to have to use.
Jules Knox College in Dunedin had a matron who students could access. Surely these students would benefit from having a matron too, instead of admin staff with pretentious titles who’ve done nothing to stop them from going hungry and now becoming ill. Fat lot of use hiring another assistant to the lucrative business owners will be.
‘Profit before people ‘ is one thing, but profit before children’s well-being is obscene. Sepuloni should never have knee-capped the Commissioner for Children when they have never needed one more.
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