alt Hacker News100%. In fact, this exact scenario is playing out in the cattle industry.
Screwworm, a parasite that kills cattle in days is making a comeback. And we are less prepared for it this time because previously (the 1950s-1970s) we had a lot more labor in the industry to manually check each head of cattle. Bloomberg even called it out specifically.
Ranchers also said the screwworm would be much deadlier if it were to return, because of a lack of labor. “We can’t fight it like we did in the ’60s, we can’t go out and rope every head of cattle and put a smear on every open wound,” Schumann said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-05-02/deadly-sc...
This sounds like the kind of labor problem that could quickly be solved by hiring more people. So really the worst case here is that beef will cost a little more for a little while. Hardly an existential threat.