But staff were uncomfortable with eating or reusing the recalled food, which they thought looked and tasted bad.

“If this happened in China, you eat the product and probably get diarrhoea for one day but then your body gets toughened up to the bacteria. Kiwi people here are friggin’ weak. They need to be toughened up,” Xinchen Liu told one employee.

Now Liu, the sole owner and director, has been sentenced after failing to ensure food in her restaurant was safe and suitable to eat.

The courts found she was also reckless as to whether that failure created risk to lives when she directed staff to retain recalled meals and contravened the Immigration Act by employing staff who were either meant to be working elsewhere or not lawfully entitled to work in New Zealand.

In June 2019, a recall of all Samurai Bowl ramen meals began. All frozen meals manufactured after Liu took control of the business three months prior were included as her poor record keeping did not allow specific batches to be traced.

According to the summary of facts, Liu conducted a recall as required and sent food safety officers pictures of discarded meal wrappers. The recall order was closed in August on the expectation she had done what was required to remove the risk to the public.

However, she had done the exact opposite and directed staff to retain the recalled meals because they cost money.

The meals were then stored in freezers with a quantity of them defrosted and separated into their component parts of miso soup, noodles and meat. These parts were then put into containers and refrozen for use in restaurant meals, as well as staff meals.

Liu hid the recalled food from food safety officers during inspections and told staff to tell the officers that any recalled meals they saw were for her personal use.

Miso soup and meat from the meals was served to customers while staff were provided with the miso soup and noodles as a meal entitlement.

Staff had previously been entitled to a fresh meal if they worked more than eight hours but were told they could only eat the recalled soup and noodles, with the recalled meat to be used for paying customers.

Staff were uncomfortable with eating or reusing the recalled food, which they thought looked and tasted bad, and sometimes threw it out if they thought Liu wouldn’t notice.

When customers complained about the look or taste of the recalled food they would be served fresh items.

More than 12 months later, in August 2020, a customer reported suffering severe food poisoning after eating a ramen meal at the restaurant.

Medical evaluation confirmed the illness as consistent with Staphylococcus aureus.

Between October 2019 and May 2021, Liu employed three staff, two of whom held work visas with conditions only allowing them to work at unrelated companies.

The third was not lawfully able to work in New Zealand.

Liu was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court on Tuesday to six months’ home detention and fined $30,000.

She was convicted of aiding and abetting, knowingly supplying false and misleading information, allowing persons to unlawfully work and failing to ensure that food was safe and suitable.

Judge Raoul Neave said Liu had misled immigration officers as to the status of her workers while helping conceal their immigration status.

Judge Neave also described her as “somewhat cavalier with the health of her staff and the public”.

“There is extreme carelessness.”

The judge said it was important to note that breaches of the immigration scheme undermined proper determinations of who could be in the country.

“There is a real risk of exploitation of workers, it undermines New Zealand’s international reputation.”

Judge Neave fined Liu $20,000 plus $149 court costs for the Ministry of Primary Industries related charges and $10,000 plus $149 court costs for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment related charges.

New Zealand Food Safety acting deputy director general Jenny Bishop said: “Most people do the right thing, but Ms Liu didn’t do as she claimed and stored the meals in freezers.

“This was deliberate and reckless behaviour and Ms Liu’s actions had potential to cause sickness and health risk for a number of customers.”

MBIE manager of investigations Jason Perry confirmed the three workers were in New Zealand legally on various visas. However, they breached those visa conditions while working for Liu.

Of the three workers involved in the case, one chose to leave New Zealand. The others remained on valid visas, working with Immigration New Zealand to ensure they continued to comply with immigration requirements, Perry said.

It is not the first time the Colombo St restaurant has been embroiled in controversy.

In 2018, prior to Liu purchasing the business, Samurai Bowl, trading under Japan Power, was fined $70,000 for employment breaches. At the time, the Labour Inspectorate described the offences as “systemic” breaches of the Holidays Act.

The company said the breaches were not intentional and arose from a lack of understanding of the law. It complied with an improvement notice issued in May 2017 and paid $23,927 in arrears to 25 affected current and former employees.

Al Williams is an Open Justice reporter for the New Zealand Herald, based in Christchurch. He has worked in daily and community titles in New Zealand and overseas for the last 16 years. Most recently he was editor of the HC Post, based in Whangamatā. He was previously deputy editor of Cook Islands News.