Authorities are worried the risk could be blown out of proportion as the strawberry needle scandal that swept across Australia crossed to New Zealand.
A punnet of strawberries bought from an Auckland supermarket on Sunday was found to have needles in it.
Paul Dansted from the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) said the incident in Auckland was under investigation but he was concerned that the risk could be blow out of proportion.
“That is one of the things we’re concerned about…I’m going to continue to eat strawberries, we don’t see any particular threat at the moment but obviously when we do get reports, we’ll take them seriously and we’ll work with police to ensure that whoever is doing it can be tracked down and dealt with,” he told TVNZ1’s Breakfast.
He said any strawberries exported from Australia are now going through metal protection processes.
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