David Seymour

Yep, and look, not to be here making excuses, but let's just put a few of these in a bit more context.

There were some issues that occurred while we had the big blow-up in the factory in Hamilton in Term 1 2025.

We've all lived through that.

I don't really want to live through it again.

But we got some alternate suppliers in to cover them, and some of them made mistakes.

We're not doing that anymore because the factory's back running.

So that's kind of, you know, not minimising it, but that issue has been resolved.

There are sometimes issues where there was contamination, but it actually occurred after the meals were delivered to the school, as we saw in the case of the Christchurch issue just last year.

So I don't want to minimise it.

We take it really seriously.

Food safety is number one if you have a food programme like this.

But I think sometimes some of these things just need to be put in their proper context with the proper explanation.

You know, anyone that's dealt with chicken knows that it can be undercooked and that can lead to serious problems.

But that has not been a widespread problem.

It may have occurred in an event, but it's not something that happens routinely or even close to it.

yeah i would expect so the problems that are here either occurred in 2024 under the labor scheme or in the first term of our scheme when we had that blowout with the factory and the substitutes and all of that so now that's all done uh i wouldn't expect to see anything like that rate of problem there will be problems if you deliver 50 million meals every year some of them will there will be issues right i mean at any any kind of food production

But what we're doing, I actually think is very good.

And at the end of the day, we are saving about $150 million of taxpayer money every year by doing it this way, while getting the same proportion of meals rejected and sent back.

There's a number that kids don't eat every day, as anyone that's fed kids knows.

So the quality is the same.