In December 2024, Alice Teller warned that private equity in the United Kingdom was encroaching on veterinary services, raising prices and bullying workers, closing up shops whenever anyone had the utter temerity to ask for something as absurd as decent working conditions and a fair wage. And as the private equity push accelerated, pushing out smaller operations and independent outfits, what was a worker or consumer to do? Where could one go?
Private Equity Vet keeps a running list and map of corporate- or private-equity-owned vets around the world. By the latest count, there are over 12,000 such outfits in the United States and Canada, and over 2,000 in the UK — and the list is growing. Stateside Mars alone owns over 2,000 practices across three brand names (with another 128 north of the border), while in Canada Berkshire Partners controls 375 under the Vet Strategy brand, the largest of a handful of operators in the country. The Private Equity Vet numbers suggest that as much as 75 percent of the veterinary market in the US and Canada is corporate- or private-equity-owned.
The costs of consolidated, corporatized, or private-equity-controlled vet services add up fast. As per the iron law of monopoly and oligopoly, concentration in the market tends to produce higher prices and poorer service. Without countervailing and competing options, it will become harder and harder to find a veterinary clinic whose prices and standards aren’t set by a handful of corporate owners, the former high and the latter low. That’s likely to mean not only high costs for visits and procedures but also lower pay for workers, scant benefits, and diminished working conditions.
As wretched as the PE capture of an industry can be, the takeover of vet services is particularly disconcerting because of the nature of what vets do: they care for animals, usually pets whose owners are very fond of them or, at the very least, don’t wish to see the creatures suffer. This dynamic creates highly inelastic demand such that pet owners will be stuck paying inflated prices and receiving poorer service because they refuse to see the animals they consider part of their family descend into poor health and misery. So, they’ll pay. Or, worse, in extreme cases they won’t because, despite desperation and devotion, they’re unable to, and their helpless and blameless pets — who can’t count to one, let alone understand what private equity is — will suffer or die.