{"id":16113,"date":"2025-12-23T05:55:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16113"},"modified":"2025-12-23T05:55:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T16:55:39","slug":"safety-concerns-after-cheese-dumped-at-waikato-landfill-taken-and-re-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16113","title":{"rendered":"Safety concerns after cheese dumped at Waikato landfill, taken and re-sold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cheese, previously dumped in a landfill, has been taken and re-sold in the Waikato, New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) says.<\/p>\n<p>NZFS said the Over The Moon branded cheese was taken from Putaruru Landfill and was reportedly being re-sold on Sunday, despite it being unsafe to eat.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have serious concerns about the safety of this product given the company determined it was not suitable for sale and rightly disposed of it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Also, eating cheese that has been in a landfill for a period of time and out of the food supply chain carries very obvious food safety risks of contamination,&#8221; NZFS deputy-director general Vincent Arbuckle said.<\/p>\n<p>NZFS is warning people to not eat affected cheese if found and to call 0800 00 83 33.<\/p>\n<p>The affected cheeses have the batch numbers 18.11.25, 25.11.25 and 26.11.25. They include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Camembert<\/li>\n<li>OMG<\/li>\n<li>Black Truffle Brie<\/li>\n<li>Galactic Gold<\/li>\n<li>Halloumi<\/li>\n<li>Gee&#8217;s Spread (Black Truffle &amp; Garlic Chilli flavours)<\/li>\n<li>Smoked Chilli Camembert<\/li>\n<li>Goat Camembert<\/li>\n<li>Double Delight<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Over the Moon reported the issue to NZFS.<\/p>\n<p>NZFS is not currently aware of any related illness.<\/p>\n<h3>&#8216;It&#8217;s pretty anti-social&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p>Retired microbiologist John Brooks was appalled.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s pretty anti-social, frankly, the company apparently had already dumped it as being unsuitable for sale. Digging it out of the dump and then selling it&#8230; It&#8217;s not to be recommended, I would not buy it!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said there were numerous reasons why it would be a bad idea to eat cheese that had been dumped in a landfill.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;First of all, there&#8217;s the reason it was sent to the landfill. I don&#8217;t know why it was dumped, but that&#8217;s one issue,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The other is, of course, that having been in a landfill it&#8217;s been at room temperature. There will be contamination on the outside of the packaging, and if there are brie and camembert&#8230; The packaging isn&#8217;t particularly secure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s a serious risk to consume.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said leaving cheese at room temperature could cause nasty bacteria to grow.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anything that&#8217;s in there, besides the ordinary starter cultures, can grow. If, for example, they&#8217;ve got coliforms in there &#8211; E. coli possibly &#8211; that will grow, and that can produce illnesses in consumers and even produce toxins,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, contaminants from the other rubbish could easily transfer to the cheese.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s on the packaging, as soon as the packaging is opened, whoever opens it and cuts the cheese is going to transfer some of it from the outside to the inside,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s something like camembert, which is wrapped in foil or paper, that would be very easy to contaminate even before it&#8217;s opened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cheese, previously dumped in a landfill, has been taken and re-sold in the Waikato, New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) says. NZFS said the Over The Moon branded cheese was taken from Putaruru Landfill and was reportedly being re-sold on Sunday, despite it being unsafe to eat. &#8220;We have serious concerns about the safety of this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16115,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16113\/revisions\/16115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}