Lincoln – Gov. Pete Ricketts said last Thursday that he doesn’t plan to close any of the state’s meatpacking plants, despite a surge in COVID-19 cases in their surrounding communities that have turned them into the state’s biggest hot spots.

Ricketts said he was concerned that shuttering the plants could hurt the food supply and lead to “civil unrest” if residents were to suddenly lose access to meat.

“You want to talk about some of these protests going on right now?” the governor said. “Think about how mad people were when they couldn’t get paper products. Think about if they couldn’t get food. This is why it’s vitally important that we keep our food processors open and do everything we can to ensure the supply chain, because we would have civil unrest if that was not the case.”

His comments came as Dakota County, home to a Tyson plant, reported 133 new COVID-19 cases, bringing its total to 246 as of last Thursday. Tyson acknowledged some workers are among the infected, but it wouldn’t give the exact number. At least one employee has died.

Ricketts said that employees who worked close together at the plants may be responsible for some of the spread, but he argued the local outbreaks may also be driven by large groups living together in homes, as is common in many meatpacking towns.

“This is a community issue,” Ricketts said. “We have to focus not only on what the worksites are doing, but also what’s going on at home.”

Coronavirus hot spots have surfaced in Hall, Dawson and Dakota counties, all areas of Nebraska with meatpacking plants and large concentrations of workers who often stand side by side to carve meat. The number of cases in Hall County has even surpassed the Omaha area, which has more than nine times as many people.

Plants throughout the country faced similar problems, leading to them to suspend their operations in South Dakota and Iowa.

Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson said the state’s farmers are already hurting from those shutdowns and production slowdowns in other states.

“Widespread closure of processing plants, even for limited periods of time, could be devastating for farmers and consumers alike,” Nelson said.