Kiwifruit growers claim ministry’s negligence let Psa virus into NZ
That happiness is a highly prized emotional state in Western culture is not hard to prove. Whether it is the smiling faces on billboards, television, magazines or the internet, advertisers are constantly pairing their projects with feelings of happiness.
Social media — or more accurately the way we have learnt to use it — is also a constant source of idealised happy faces. This leaves us with the distinct impression that what counts as an indicator of success is whether or not we are feeling happy.
Valuing feelings of happiness or wanting others to be happy is not a bad thing. The problem arises when we come to believe we should always feel this way. This makes our negative emotions — which are inevitable and normally quite adaptive — seem like they are getting in the way of an important goal in life.
From this perspective, sadness is no longer an expected feeling you have when things go wrong. Rather, it is interpreted as a sign of failure. Next, we selected around 100 participants who met the clinical cut-off score for depression to take part in a month-long daily-diary study. They were asked to complete a survey at the end of each day about their depressive symptoms, as well as whether they had felt socially pressured not to experience such feelings. We found perceived social pressure not to feel depressed reliably predicted increased depressive symptoms the next day. However, this perceived social pressure was not predicted by prior feelings of depression. This provided evidence Kiwifruit orchardists say the Psa virus ruined lives, and now the Government must take responsibility.
A landmark case begins in the High Court at Wellington today, with 212 kiwifruit growers banding together and alleging government negligence allowed the virus into New Zealand.
The case alleges a known destructive strain of Psa was let into the country in 2009 because the Ministry for Primary Industries didn’t follow its own regulations.
The growers say the virus caused them losses of $376 million, before interest and costs. They say this is a conservative figure as they are still suffering and quantifying losses.
Craig Jeffries is among the growers taking legal action. When his vines were infected he was forced to sell the orchard he took over when his father died.
“We had a trial block of gold kiwifruit, and one morning we went up there, and they looked like they’d been sprayed overnight.
“But it was Psa, it had hit, and it tipped them over within a day.
“It was really virulent. And then it got into our green.”
Jeffries didn’t want to give up the legacy his father had left him, but he Participants who had experienced failure in the happy room were three times more likely to ruminate on the anagram task than those who had experienced failure in the room without any happiness paraphernalia.
We also found the more people ruminated on the anagram task, the more negative emotions they experienced.
Failing in the happy room increased rumination and in turn made people feel worse.
Western culture has been globalising happiness, contributing to an epidemic of depression.
This is not to reduce individuallevel agency, but to take seriously the growing body of evidence that much of what we do is often decided outside of conscious awareness. felt he had no option.
“I had to refinance my orchard. The bank was getting nervous about the situation, and I needed finance to get through . . . So I had to do a fire sale of the orchard, just to save my home.”
Jeffries managed to keep his home
There has to have been some major cock-up for this to have got into the country in the first place.
and a small separate orchard. But it’s not enough to make ends meet and he now does odd jobs including rugby coaching and stints at the saleyard.
He points to Psa not reaching the South Island as evidence it must have been imported into the country, which meant the ministry had failed.
“There has to have been some major cock-up for this to have got into the country in the first place. We should have been protected, we thought we were protected, and we weren’t protected.
“At the end of this we want an acknowledgment that hey, yes, there were things that happened here that shouldn’t have.”
Fellow grower Mike Montgomery also passionately believes a government mistake led to the infection.
He was one of the “lucky” ones, managing to hold on to his orchards.
But six years of fighting the virus has left him with debt, and at one point he considered moving to Australia and driving trucks to stay afloat.
Montgomery said a court case wasn’t what growers wanted, but there had to be accountability.
“This disease never needed to get to New Zealand. It didn’t just miraculously hop into the air, fly here from China or wherever, and skip Australia.”
The Ministry for Primary Industries doesn’t accept the allegations, and is fighting the court action.
A spokesperson couldn’t make “substantive comment” ahead of today’s hearing, but stood by a statement on the ministry website.
“MPI did not ‘let’ Psa into the country by allowing pollen imports to New Zealand,” the statement says. “Various studies are inconclusive as to exactly how the bacterium entered New Zealand.”
In the statement, the ministry says it has statutory immunity from civil proceedings under the Biosecurity Act.
Craig Jeffries