Breeders are a keystone part of this dystopia. You can even see it with the avian influenza outbreaks: the bird harming industry depends on getting new generations from breeders quickly and at scale.
The only ones worse than the "scale" breeders are the maintainer breeders, the ones who breed to maintain the purity of the genetic parents with their profitable traits.
If that keystone happens to fall, the rest falls too.