Students at Invercargill’s Aurora College dined on "3 cheese macaroni" from 4712km away yesterday, a reality school principal Craig Taylor said was "disappointing".
"It's disappointing if the government's purchasing lunches from overseas when local communities have lost a significant source of income by supplying local schools, local produce," he said.
Mr Taylor said the school used to produce their own lunches, sourcing ingredients from local suppliers, and that students at the school have been asking "Can we go back to the old ways?".
Around 600 macaroni meals were delivered yesterday, the principal said, and about a-third were not eaten.
The meals are part of the government’s revamped school lunch programme, which started this year.
School Lunch Collective last year won a contract to provide free lunches to about 130,000 students in 466 schools, but earlier this week one of its three members — Libelle Group — went into liquidation.
The other two companies behind the collective are wholesaler Gilmours and food service provider Compass Group NZ.
In explanation for the overseas-made dishes, a spokesperson for the collective said it sourced its meals and produce through Gilmours and other suppliers.
The spokesperson said due to a "manufacturing shortfall" two of the collective’s set meals had been sourced from Australia.
This comes after schools outside of Auckland were served pies from the Australian company Mrs Mac’s in February.
In a statement at the time, the collective said the pies were a "one-off" and recognised that the pies did not meet the "nutritional guidelines".
When asked about the quality of the Australian macaroni served yesterday, Mr Taylor said it did not look very nutritious at all.
"It looked like a microwave meal, to be honest," he said.
The school principal said overall, the quality of the meals from the new lunch programme had been "rather poor".
