1 Tonight ` It's good healthy stodge. ...a tantalising treat goes bad. There was things flying round in there, and that was when I was, 'Oh, yuck!' (LAUGHS) Moths and larvae in packaged food? I see lots of droppings. So is this contaminated or free protein? So you'd eat this stuffing mix? Yeah, I'm Dutch. (LAUGHS) I paid for it. (LAUGHS) Plus ` All I saw was black smoke. ...an oven nearly destroyed their home. Flames going up the windowsill, along the curtains. But the fight for compensation has got temperatures rising. I thought, 'Well, what the hell? Nobody seems to be listening to us.' And remember Maipo? I miss you so much. She's waited four and a half years to hold her man. I'm excited. I still ask myself, 'Is he real? Is he real?' (LAUGHS) The big day has finally arrived. Maybe because I feel like I'm gonna see my boyfriend for the first time. (LAUGHS) Copyright Able 2017. Welcome to the show. We lead tonight with bugs, or more specifically, bugs in your food. Some scientists reckon protein-packed creepy-crawlies will be the wonder food of the future. And if you're thinking, 'Not in my house,' well, here's a fact that'll leave you squeamish. Get this ` we scoff about half a kilo of bugs every year. That's right. They're in our processed food. And if you're finding that hard to swallow, you're not alone. Here's Matt. (ELECTRONIC MUSIC) Like a lot of Poms, the Toomeys love a good roast... It's satisfying, like fish and chips is satisfying ` it's good healthy stodge. ...and reckon you can't have chicken without stuffing. They tend to fight over it sometimes, you know, who's got the last stuffing ball. The Whangaparaoa family's preferred product ` Paxo, from solid, dependable old Blighty. That's tradition. It's Paxo means stuffing. It's just one of those things ` like Heinz means beans, Paxo means stuffing. For how long would you say you've chowed down on it? Uh, do you want to know how old I am? I can't remember ever not eating Paxo. Lately, though, the little taste of home has left a really foul taste in their mouths. There was things flying round in there, and that was when I was, like, 'Oh, yuck!' (LAUGHS) And I had to go get my husband, cos I don't like bugs. (LAUGHS) We talking not one, but two unopened packets stuffed with these wee critters ` half a dozen live unidentified flying insects and their slow-moving creepy-crawly young. I opened it up, saw a few things in it, and I thought, 'Oh.' Looked a bit cobwebbish, and, yeah, I kinda thought that can't be right. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out it wasn't. The Toomey's bought the yet-to-reach-it's-best-before-date product online through Union Jacks, based on Auckland's North Shore, in October, the stuffing mix sitting right here alongside the pasta and what they call crisps in the pantry until roast time. You didn't eat stuffing that night? No. (LAUGHS) Needless to say, wasn't in for a protein snack. (LAUGHS) And who could blame them? What do you think we're dealing with here? I have no idea. Small ones, that's all I know, and I don't want them to get any bigger. Do you guys have a problem in your pantry? No, not normally ` just keeping the kids out. No problem with any other food in your pantry? No, none at all ` all good. We couldn't help but have a wee look. Now, I'm no expert in the kitchen, but this looks pretty sweet to me. But Pete is worried. Have you at any stage thought, we could be dealing with a biohazard here? Yes, definitely. Because if that flys out of my window, gets into a tree and all of a sudden decides it likes New Zealand, who's gonna know what's gonna happen in five years? They might be this big. There might be swarms of them around Whangaparaoa. You just don't know. Wanting answers, but short on time, Pete, the plastic-food-packaging sales rep ` yeah, potentially a little ironic ` initially dropped the pest-filled Paxo in to Fair Go at TVNZ HQ. Hello. These are for Fair Go. Great. Thank you. I just thought I'd do my duty as a good model citizen. We were a little clueless, so called in a blast from the past ` TV-friendly entomologist Ruud Kleinpaste. I see lots of droppings. In entomology, we call it frass. It's a nice word for poo. It's gorgeous ` little poo comes out of little bottoms, big poos comes out of big bottoms, so you can see there's a whole series of caterpillars there. Frass in your food ` nothing worse, but what is to blame? This is Plodia interpunctella, which is the entomological way of saying Indian mealmoth. Cosmopolitan ` it lives in every country in the world except... Antarctica. This is the pantry moth? Yeah, the pantry moth, mealmoth ` lots of different words for it. So I'm picking if it was to escape, it's not going to ruin the country? No, no, no. They've been around here since, uh, people arrived, especially since white man arrived in the 1700s. I think Captain Cook's responsible for this. He took it in his boat. I know he did. Phew. No need to alert the authorities, but when apportioning blame, this is important ` the entire life cycle of this common critter ` anywhere between 30 and 300 days. When do you think these bugs would have entered the product? That's really hard to say. It could be... It could be in contaminated stuff as it was bagged ` you know, could be. It could, but mostly, you get 'em in warehouses when you store food like this for prolonged periods of time. Ruud reckons contamination most likely occurred during long-term storage, the pantry moth notorious for breaking and entering. It's like the undertaker squad. All these moths have to do is go, like... (SNIFFS) there, and the female will lay her eggs literally next to a little hole or next to a seam of the packaging. The tiny caterpillar comes out, it's got diamond-tipped mandibles, goes straight through the plastic, through the cardboard. So insects can eat through packaging, but can we eat them? When you do find a packet with silk webbing and caterpillars and moths, what do you do? People throw it in the rubbish bin, caterpillars go out of the rubbish bin, go... (SNIFFS) 'Where's the pantry?' (WHOOSHES) Straight back in. Ding-dong. So what you do is you put in the freezer for a day or two, three, kill the whole infestation. Then you've got a choice ` chuck it out or use it? So you'd eat the stuffing mix after it had been in the freezer? Yeah. I'd have no problem, yeah. I'm Dutch. (LAUGHS) I paid for it. (LAUGHS) But before you laugh at Ruud, you might have to laugh at yourself. Each person in the` in the world eats, on average, a pound ` half a kilo ` of insect meat a year. That includes vegetarians, vegans,... (LAUGHS) homeopaths, naturopaths ` anybody. And that is because we don't notice them, we don't actually have an idea that it's happening, and the other thing is that if you, for instance, put a DNA probe into orange juice, you realise that orange juice is not made from pristine oranges ` there's maggots in there, there's caterpillars in there. It's all been blitzed up ` there you go. Do you mind if I have a little bit of time out right now? Blah. I feel a bit sick! (LAUGHS) It's lovely. (LAUGHS) Back in Whangaparaoa, the Toomeys still have two unopened boxes of Paxo. So to increase our sample size, Pete, who is taking no chances this time, is going in. And while it all looks A-OK initially, on closer inspection, it wasn't so good. They're in there somewhere. They are? They are. More of that mealmoth webbing in both boxes. It's bitten through the hole. It's got teeth. Without knowing exactly where it all went wrong, we talked to the importer, Union Jack's, and the maker of Paxo, Premier Foods in the UK. Yeah, we have a couple of very unhappy expats here in New Zealand. We're told they're both now investigating. And while we all wait, the North Shore company didn't want their loyal customers to go hungry. We've got a $25 full refund, $25 gift vouchers and a whole heap of other treats in there. Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. Go for gold. Crisps, pork crackling and chocolate all the way from the UK. But what about the old family favourite? Ruud thinks you should put the Paxo in the freezer, kill the bugs, then eat the stuffing as you normally would. Your thoughts? Fine. I don't know about the kids, but I'll try. (LAUGHS) It's frightening. (CHUCKLES) (ELECTRONIC MUSIC) I hope we haven't put you off your dinner there. Now, we've been talking to the manufacturers, exporters and retailers. None of them knew of the complaint before we contacted them. Nor do they know of any other complaints. And the manufacturers say they're sorry to hear about the Toomeys' experience. They're adamant the infestation must have occurred way after the products left their control. The exporters have also been in touch... And as for the retailers, they tell us they had the Paxo packets for just three days, whereas the Toomeys had them for four months. They say it's impossible to confirm where and when the bugs got in. We do agree. We'd also like to say good on Union Jack's for coming to the party with a hamper of goodies. Okey-dokey. Time now for the moment of truth ` it's the final round of our true/false challenge. Will we find a winner in the Bay of Plenty? It's the Bay of Plenty, and the knowledge to date has been plentiful. But has it been enough? That's right ` tonight's the night we find out if anyone's got all six questions right in our true/false challenge, to walk away with our $20 prize money. And our final question... We've got a great mechanic. He wouldn't do that to us. He always rings us up. No, I think that's false. False. False? I'd say no way. (BOTH LAUGH) True. True? False. False. You don't pay for that. So true or false? We'll tell you shortly. Ooh. Now, normally, I'd rely on my extensive, extensive knowledge of consumer law, but I'm just gonna go with my gut this time, and I'm saying there's no way I'd pay for that. That's false. All right. You, though, are out of the running for the $20 prize, because you ditched us last week. Talk about the fine print. All right. Coming up after the break ` an oven too hot to handle nearly burns down the house. All I saw was black smoke. But the fight for compensation has got temperatures rising. I thought, 'Well, what the hell? Nobody seems to be listening to us.' And ` I'm excited. I still ask myself, 'Is he real? Is he real?' (LAUGHS) ...a four-and-a-half-year wait is finally over. Get ready for a case of the warm fuzzies. Hey, cameraman, have you got enough tissues? (CHUCKLES) Welcome back. Careless cooking is the number-one cause of kitchen fires in New Zealand. So here's a public safety announcement from us ` if your oven catches fire, close the door. If a pan bursts into flames, cover it with a lid. Remember, oxygen is the enemy, and water can be as well, so never throw it on a grease fire ` it'll just spread the flames. Wow. I am really impressed. Listen to you. Yes, but how do you put the lid on a kitchen fire when your oven goes rogue? Here's Hannah. The kitchen is Lavaina's happy place. I love doing cooking. My family comes in, and they enjoy what I cook. But last November, her oven nearly cooked her entire kitchen. We were just cooking a roast, and all I did was put it on so we had a slow cook, went out, cos it started raining, to get the washing. My partner was down in the garden. And then I turned around, and there was smoke coming out the window. I ran in here. All I saw was black smoke in here. I mean, you couldn't see the table, you couldn't see anything. Flames were coming out the oven. So the oven was fully on fire? It was fully on fire. There's flames going up the windowsill, along the curtains, and I reached over and switched the switch off. Her partner, Phil, heard her cries for help. 'Phil, Phil, smoke's coming out the window!' And what did you do? I ran, went straight over and, you know, grabbed the hose. What did you see when you looked? I saw red, red, you know. Yeah. And the whole stove was red? The whole thing was red in that corner, eh? And on fire, obviously. And on fire, yeah. Lavaina and Phil had only had the oven a few weeks. They bought it second-hand from Newbolds, and it had been trouble from the get-go. The oven kept heating up and heating up and heating up. It got so hot that you couldn't actually touch the door to open it? Yeah. Luckily, the oven came with a warranty, and although it was second-hand, under consumer law, it has the same protection. Newbolds did come out twice to try and fix the problem. I said, 'Look, mate,' I said, 'the stove is getting hot ` you know, and very hot.' The serviceman replaced a fuse and later fixed the fan-bake cover, which had been falling off. But the family say because the overheating continued, they could only used the oven at low temps. Why didn't they call Newbolds back to fix the overheating? He said that it was costing them too much money to get parts for it, because we didn't pay that much for it. Mm. And, well, after that comment, I thought, 'Well, what the hell? I'm not gonna call them again, because then nobody's going to do anything. 'Nobody seems to be listening to us.' So, Lavaina and Phil thought that the faulty oven had caused the fire. Their insurance company, Lumley, agreed. Then she came back and says to me that it was, um, a service fault. Service faults or failures and mechanical breakdown weren't covered by Lumley's policy. Lumley seems to have based their decision on this assessment of the oven, saying it was hard to completely establish the starting cause of the fire, but that it may have been the thermostat. Insurance covered the kitchen repairs, but not a replacement oven. Well, what about Newbolds' warranty? He said to me that... because there was a fire in the stove, the fire had started in the stove, in the oven,... but he was blaming our roast. Mm. Having paid Newbolds $764 for the first oven, they were then charged another $999 for the replacement. Do you think you should be paying twice? It doesn't seem fair. No. It's not. Newbolds didn't want to do an on-camera interview, but I did talk to them for about an hour, and they really wanted us to see the oven, and this is it ` quite a mess. Newbolds say they couldn't find an electrical or mechanical fault and that the thermostat seemed intact. They say they'd paid to install the oven and replacing switches ` about $300 worth. They believe this wasn't an overheating issue, it was accidental fire and should be covered by insurance. Who am I supposed to turn to? Who am I supposed to ask questions with? I mean, I'm angry, but I don't know who to take it out on, and I'm actually taking it out on Philip, which is not Philip's fault. This has been pretty stressful? Yeah, I feel the stress, you know, with all this going on. Here's a couple who did everything right, bought an oven covered by a warranty and had insurance for that oven, and yet... It wasn't our fault that the stove caught alight, but we do blame ourselves, cos we've got no one else to blame, really. She actually gets up in the night and, sort of, says, 'Phil, Phil, there's a fire.' And this has been going on for quite a while. There's nothing there, but it's how she sees it. I wake up in the night smelling smoke, as if there's a fire in the house again. It'd make a big difference to you to not have to worry about one less thing, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So, we went back to Lumleys. We said if the cause of the fire hasn't been proved, why not pay out on it as an accident? And then we had some news for Lavaina, Phil and their niece Staci. The insurance company has agreed to pay out the full cost of the replacement oven. Ah. Oh my gosh. Thank you. So they're wiping that $1000 debt. Aw, it's all right, aunt. It's all right. Are you OK? Are you OK, Lavaina? Yeah. I hope those are tears of happiness. They are, I'm sure they are. Just relief, I think. What difference will that make? Ah, quite a bit, actually. Sorry, I'm lost for words now,... (SNIFFLES) And that's not like me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you've done, and I do appreciate that Lumley's coming to the party now. (SNIFFLES) Great result. And well done to Lumleys for coming to the party, but only after Hannah went out and had a talk to them. We've only got one Hannah ` she can't go out to everyone. (LAUGHS) We'd love to send her, though. Right. Coming up after the break ` a shining example of why we love our jobs. I miss you so much. From tears of sorrow... If my best is not good enough, then I'm sorry. ...to tears of joy. Hey, cameraman, have you got enough tissues? (CHUCKLES) Meipo's long wait is nearly over. Why are you nervous? I don't know. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) Maybe because I feel like I'm gonna see my boyfriend for the first time. And ` will anyone take out the true/false challenge? We'll tell you shortly. Welcome back. There are some days we really love our job. And today's one of those days. Cos do you remember couple of weeks back, we told you about the heartbreaking story of Meipo's scuttled reunion? Well, we suggest you get the tissues on standby, because Garth's got a happy ending to this sad tale. It's a rainy Sunday at Wellington Airport. One by one, the travellers come. Every warm welcome erases the distance and the loneliness they've felt. There are eagle eyes on the gates as a patient woman waits. I'm excited. I still ask myself, 'Is he real? Is he real?' (CHUCKLES) Remember Meipo Rivera? Meipo had been waiting for so much for so long, waiting for a new kidney ` still is; waiting for good news from a travel agent that stuffed up her booking; but mostly waiting for her man, Edgar. Are you nervous? Mm. Why are you nervous? I don't know. Maybe because I feel like I'm gonna see my boyfriend for the first time. (LAUGHS) Her husband of 20 years, actually. She's still a giddy bride. Quick recap while we wait for the flight to land. The high cost of US healthcare drove Meipo and Edgar apart. He stayed while she spent four and a half years back here getting treatment. Yeah, I miss you so much. I'm doing my best, so if my best is not good enough,... then I'm sorry. Dialysis won't cure a broken heart. Meipo paid Flight Centre more than $2000 so Edgar could visit her at last. Flight Centre failed to check her husband's middle name when it booked the flights. Meipo faced a whopping $1300 extra charges from United Airlines to reissue the tickets. After we got involved, Flight Centre apologised for its initial mistake and covered the extra charges. After all, that's why you go to an expert, right? So, here's a fun fact while were waiting ` it turns out, according to Flight Centre, the airline that Edgar is using today doesn't actually require a middle name at all, so all of this could have been avoided in the first place. That's what Flight Centre told us after our first story. Other travel agents said the same. Forgive us for being a bit cautious by now ` we checked, and, well, listen to United Airline's representative for yourself. So if you have a middle name on your passport, best to use it on the ticket too. And if your travel agent says otherwise, maybe ask them to check exactly what the airline asks for. I hope Edgar really is just about to arrive. Hey, cameraman, have you got enough tissues? I need some. I forgot to buy a box of tissues. (CHUCKLES) That's Meipo's friend Salote. Like us, she's here to make sure it all goes to plan now and to share with you some of the joy Meipo feels and help with the nerves. What did you have for breakfast? Nothing. You haven't had breakfast yet? No. Oh, that's no good. I wait. I wait for him so we can both eat breakfast together. I'll make his eggs the way he likes them. (DING-DONG!) They're arriving thick and fast now. Where's Edgar? Oh, that has to be him. Oh my God. (SNIFFLES) Edgar Rene Rivera? Yes, sir. Pleased to meet you, man. I'm Garth. Welcome to New Zealand. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. He's keeping it together for a guy who's been in the air 23 hours. Thank you for what you did for my wife, to help her. I think you guys just got what you deserved all along. Appreciate it. Just took a bit of help, eh? Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. We can't fix everything for Meipo. But for now, at least she can face her challenges with Edgar at her side. It's lovely. I do like a good reunion. Oh! Pretty hot in here. Right. Time for the moment of truth. Now, will Pippa have to dig deep ` into her own pocket, I might add ` and hand over the $20 true-or-false challenge prize? It's the final question in our Fair Go true/false challenge... True or false? I feel like you do, which is really unfair. Yeah, same. Oh, actually, I'm changing my answer to false. I feel like you could be like no, I'm not paying for that. False. And that's right ` you don't have to pay for it. This one's covered under one of favourite laws ` the Consumer Guarantees Act. However, it is worth getting a quote before you get work done. And if you're not sure exactly what needs repairing, be sure to set a price limit. So no winners this time. Some came so close. And that prize money does not jackpot ` it goes towards milkshakes after the show. Oh, does it just? All right, that is the show, but we will be on Facebook for the next half hour to answer your questions. Our programme is always about your problems and your thoughts, so if you have either or both, please do contact us. Yes. Join us on Facebook or email us ` fairgo@tvnz.co.nz Write to us ` Private Bag 92038, Auckland 1142. That's the show. Until next week, goodnight. Have a good one.