Students misled on halal school lunches – Labour

“It’s unacceptable that our Muslim students were served a meal that David Seymour’s lunch provider said was halal, when it fact it wasn’t,” Labour’s Ethnic Communities Spokesperson Jenny Salesa said.

“Claiming a meal is religiously permissible for groups of students when it isn’t, breaks a trust we have fought long and hard to establish with communities who have long called Aotearoa home.

“New Zealand is a culturally diverse nation, rich with people of all backgrounds and faiths – and they should feel comfortable expressing their identities here.

“I back my local school principal in her push to ensure halal school lunches are as they claim to be, halal-certified.

“David Seymour must front up and apologise to these students and their families for a false claim that has resulted in disrespect to their faith,” Jenny Salesa said.

“It seems with each passing day, we hear about another mishap with David Seymour’s school lunches. First they were arriving late or not at all, then it was schools having to cover extra costs for distribution and clean up, and now they’re misleading religious students,” said Education Spokesperson Jan Tinetti.

“They should have never tampered with these school lunches in the first place, but now they’ve created a huge mess that is distracting our students’ from their learning and causing headaches for schools across the country.”