Needle scare alarms PM

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has weighed in on the strawberry scare, saying the discovery of spiked strawberries in an Auckland supermarket is alarming.

She agreed the report over the weekend was worrying, and said the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) was working on it.

‘‘It looks like they are able to quite narrowly define the origin of the issue obviously with the reporting in Australia. MPI are working to ensure they are across the issue.’’

Primary Industries Minister Damien O’connor told RNZ yesterday that he hoped a New Zealand copycat was not at work, and said the sabotage was a form of food terrorism.

As the New Zealand strawberry season gets under way, O’connor said growers here would be concerned.

‘‘I think they should be. Most of the time we have very robust and safe food safety and production systems, but there are some production systems that will have metal detectors if they’re in touch with machinery . . . so I guess we just going to have to provide the level of safety required.’’

But he thought the idea of supermarkets installing security guards around fruit sections, as they did during a baby formula scare a few years ago, was probably too much.

‘‘Look, I think it’s going too far. Clearly the actions of one or a couple of irrational individuals can’t allow us to be spooked into unreasonable precautions.

‘‘But we do have to check every part of the system and make sure that if there’s something simple that can be done . . . then we should do it, at least in the short to medium term.’’