46% of New Vets Go to Pets, 11% to Livestock — Japan Isn't Short of Vets, They're Maldistributed

The veterinarians who treat cattle and pigs are disappearing from the places that need them. Yet the number of veterinarians itself is not short. At the end of 2024 there were 39,664 registered, down just 2.0% from the 40,455 of two years earlier, essentially flat. What to look at is not the total, but the breakdown.

Counted by field, the direction is clear. Small-animal practice, the care of pet dogs and cats, rose to 16,717 (42.1%). Meanwhile food-animal practice, treating cattle and pigs, fell to 4,312 (10.9%), and the public-servant veterinarians who prevent and contain livestock epidemics to 3,117 (7.9%). The ministry groups these last two as "industrial-animal veterinarians," and their combined share slipped from 7,771 (19.2%) in 2022 to 7,429 (18.7%), about a fifth of all veterinarians.

What sets the flow is the choice of those about to become veterinarians. Among new graduates in March 2025, 504 (46%) chose small-animal clinical work, and only 124 (11%) food-animal practice. On this skew, the ministry itself states that "there is a gap between the fields society asks of veterinarians and the fields they wish to enter." The numbers exist. But they are not heading where they are needed. This is occupational maldistribution.

Why do new graduates flow to small-animal care? The difference lies largely in whether a market works. Pet care can be located in cities, and the veterinarian can set fees to a degree. It stands as a private service the owner pays for. Food-animal practice, by contrast, is bound by farmers' ability to pay and presumes long farm calls to wide fields and remote islands. Where the livestock are is far from the city. Holding the same license, the way of working and the outlook for income differ sharply. The supply side keeps being pushed in one direction.

The geographic skew mirrors this gap. Food-animal vets are almost absent from cities. On a clinic basis, the food-animal share runs from 0.6% in Tokyo and 0.5% in Osaka to 49.4% in Miyazaki, 43.8% in Iwate, and 42.2% in Kagoshima, concentrated in the livestock-heavy prefectures. Vets are simply where the animals are, and this contrast itself is natural.

There is a caveat in these figures. Japan's food-animal veterinary care has a route apart from private clinics: the veterinarians employed by agricultural mutual aid (NOSAI). Those in clinical work number 1,653 nationwide, nearly the same scale as the 1,762 in clinic-based food-animal practice. Little known to the public, it is the backbone that actually holds up veterinary care in livestock regions. It is precisely because private practice does not pay that a separate mechanism, the mutual-aid body, is needed. The supply structure itself attests to the weakness of food-animal practice.

Policy is not idle either. As of April 2026, 46 of 47 prefectures have set plans for veterinary provision, with numerical targets for securing food-animal vets. There is a scholarship scheme too. Students aiming to become food-animal vets receive up to 180,000 yen a month at private universities and 100,000 at national and public ones, in exchange for an obligation to work as food-animal vets for seven and a half to ten years after graduating. The budget for training and securing them in FY2026 is 294 million yen, up from the year before.

The core of this problem is not a labor shortage but a failure of allocation. The total number of veterinarians is roughly flat. Within it, talent is drawn into small-animal care, where the market functions, and drains from the public-good fields where it does not. Pet care stands because owners pay. But disease control and food safety are not a private service any single person pays for. They are a public good the whole of society receives. When people leave a job that cannot be priced, it is not because demand is small. It is because the market cannot pick up its value.

The breakdown of the decline shows how serious it is. Against a 3.3% fall over two years in food-animal clinical vets, the farm-sector civil-servant vets who prevent livestock epidemics fell 5.9%. If the clinical decline is a "fewer cattle get treated" problem, the civil-servant decline ties directly to a "slower first response in a crisis." When foot-and-mouth or avian influenza breaks out, this normally invisible layer is mobilized. If the hands thin, the first move to stop the spread dulls.

The concentration in a few regions breeds a lack of substitutes. Small-animal care has a large base in cities, so one departure is replaceable. Food-animal practice is skewed to a few rural prefectures, and the inflow of new graduates is a small absolute number, 124 a year. If aging and retirement overlap in a given prefecture, the veterinary care that holds up its livestock could thin suddenly, even on a national scale.

There is a supply-demand projection, too, though it needs care in reading. In the central projection the Japan Veterinary Medical Association takes as its reference, food animals face a shortfall of 900 by 2040, with a surplus of 2,300 in small animals. The projection's assumptions date to around 2007 to 2008, and that they rest on premises some 18 years old must be discounted in the reading. Even so, the direction, that maldistribution persists, lines up with today's figures.

Scholarships and service obligations hold the number of food-animal vets in place to a degree. But they do not close the gap in treatment and working conditions against small-animal care itself. Who supports the value the market cannot pick up, and how? The question of veterinarians as a pillar of food security sits in the same chain as the aging of those who till the land and the debate over self-sufficiency. Where The Structure Behind 38% Food Self-Sufficiency and Structural Problems in Agriculture and Food Security treat the producers, this treats the profession that supports production. Before the people who treat cattle are gone, what is asked is whether society can take on the pricing of a job that sits outside the market.

Further Reading

• 獣医学概論　第2版（獣医学教育モデル・コア・カリキュラム準拠） (Introduction to Veterinary Science, 2nd ed.) (Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, Midori Shobo, March 2025) — a standard text aligned with the national core curriculum of veterinary education, organizing the fields of veterinary work from small-animal and food-animal clinical practice to public-servant veterinarians. (In Japanese.)

References

The State of Veterinary Affairs (July 2026 edition) — Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. MAFF, Food Safety and Consumer Affairs Bureau

The State of Veterinary Affairs (February 2024 edition) — Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. MAFF, Food Safety and Consumer Affairs Bureau

Veterinarian Registration under Article 22 (as of December 31, 2024) — Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. MAFF, Statistics Department

Report of the Study Group on Veterinarian Supply and Demand (summary) — Japan Veterinary Medical Association. Japan Veterinary Medical Association

Basic Policy and Related Budget for Developing Veterinary Provision — Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. MAFF, Food Safety and Consumer Affairs Bureau