Vets
The corporate takeover of veterinary medicine. And the vet who still shows up anyway.
“Being admitted to the profession of veterinary medicine, I solemnly swear to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health and welfare, the prevention and relief of animal suffering...”
That’s the oath every veterinarian takes.
Every single one.
Hold that for a moment. Because what I’m about to share is going to change how you think about your next vet visit.
We got our first family dog when I was in third grade. Christmas morning. I don’t remember a single other gift from that year.
And since then, I’ve always had pets in my life. Always. They’ve been a constant through every chapter, and each one holds a very special place in my heart.
Bella has been my greatest challenge.
She came from an unethical breeder hoarder situation. Lived in a crate for over three years, pushing out litters. She didn’t know what grass felt like under her feet. Didn’t know pavement. Had never walked on a leash. Had never run. Socialization wasn’t delayed. It was absent. Everything had to be taught from scratch. Pavement. Gravel. Stairs. The fear of an adult dog encountering stairs for the first time and not knowing what to do. How to meet another dog. What a toy was. That running was allowed. That she could roll, sleep on a sofa, curl up next to a human who wasn’t going to hurt her.
She had to learn how to be a dog.
And beyond all of that, she was sick. Skinny. Shaved down to the skin to get the matted fur off. Infections everywhere. She had given up on life and on humans doing right by her.
Her body showed every bit of it. Chronic infections: ears, skin, eyes. Her immune system was so compromised she couldn’t fight off the basics. She was a mess, inside and out.
People who meet her today cannot believe she is the same dog.
What changed? Real food. Real nutrition. Targeted support for her immune system. Treating the root cause instead of chasing symptoms in circles. Asking why her body kept failing. Not just which medication would quiet it down for another thirty days.
This experience, combined with my training in integrative pet health and growing a pet services business, changed how I think about animal care entirely. And it’s why what I’m about to tell you matters to me personally, not just professionally.
Do you know who owns your vet?
Not your vet. The practice. The building. The business model behind the appointment.
Because there’s a very good chance it isn’t your vet.
Let’s start with Mars. You know them as the candy company: M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles. But Mars made a deliberate pivot years ago. They saw an opportunity to dominate the pet market entirely, and they executed on it with precision.
Today, pet care drives roughly 60% of Mars’s $50 billion in annual revenue. It is now larger than their candy business. Since entering the veterinary space, their revenue has soared 284%. They own Banfield, over 1,000 locations. VCA, another 1,000-plus, acquired for $9.1 billion. BluePearl Specialty and Emergency hospitals across 29 states. Vet diagnostic labs. Pet food brands including Pedigree, Whiskas, and Royal Canin. And they’re investing in AI-driven pet health diagnostics.
One company. Your dog’s food. Your dog’s vet. Your dog’s lab results.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s a business model.
And Mars is just one player. JAB Partners, a Luxembourg-based private equity firm better known for coffee and bakery chains, owns National Veterinary Associates and Ethos, over 1,000 more practices. Harvest Partners owns Vetcor, nearly 1,000 more. Private equity has poured over $51 billion into the veterinary sector in recent years.
When you add corporate and private equity ownership of vet practices together with the fact that an estimated 95% of common pet food brands are owned by just six global conglomerates (Mars, Nestlé Purina, Smucker’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Diamond, General Mills), the influence over your pet’s entire health ecosystem is staggering.
The numbers are devastating. About 30% of general veterinary practices are now under corporate ownership, up from 8% a decade ago. For specialty care, emergency medicine, oncology, cardiology, that number jumps to 75%. The companies controlling the food are largely the same ones controlling the care.
There’s a searchable database at privateequityvet.org, over 7,000 practices in the US and Canada known to be under corporate or private equity ownership. You can look up your clinic. Most practices don’t rebrand when they’re acquired. The name on the door may be the same one it had for twenty years.
You’d never know.
Follow the Money
Here’s a number worth sitting with.
KKR, the private equity firm that owns PetVet Care Centers and 456 veterinary practices across the country, paid its two Co-Chief Executive Officers a combined $137 million in 2024. That is not a typo. One hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. Filed with the SEC. A matter of public record.
The median salary of the veterinarian treating your pet: $125,510. The two CEOs of the firm that owns their clinic: a combined $137 million.
And that number, your vet’s number, is effectively frozen. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, veterinarian compensation today is roughly what it was in 2004. Twenty years of education, debt, emotional labor, and clinical skill. Compensated at 2004 levels, while the firms that now own their practices report record returns.
Mars is privately held, so their executive compensation stays behind closed doors. But their results don’t. Pet care now drives 60% of Mars’s $50 billion in annual revenue, a 284% increase since they entered the veterinary space. Candy built that company. Your dog’s vet visit is funding what comes next.
And here’s the part that should make you genuinely angry.
When you call around for a second opinion on a quote, when you try three different clinics in your area and find that the prices are surprisingly similar, there’s a reason for that. In many markets, those three clinics are owned by the same conglomerate. Different names on the door. Same ownership structure. Same financial targets. Same pressure on the vet inside.
You think you’re comparison shopping. You’re not. You’re calling the same company three times.
That’s not a market. That’s theater.
The Person Behind the White Coat
Now let me be clear about something, because this matters.
The majority of veterinarians went into this field because they love animals. They took that oath and they meant every word. The problem isn’t your vet. The problem is the system they are increasingly being asked to operate inside.
I was sitting with the owner of an independent practice recently, a veterinarian who built something from scratch because he genuinely believed he could do it differently. We were talking about the realities of running a clinic, and he walked me through the math. The number of patients they need to see each day just to keep the lights on. Just to make payroll. The margin between a thriving practice and a closed one is razor thin, and it is measured in appointment slots.
And then he told me about a dog that had come in that morning.
The owner brought her in panicked and knowing something was wrong. By the time they got her on the table, and looked under ultrasound, it was clear. An aggressive tumor. Ruptured. She was bleeding out internally, and there was nothing to be done.
He became a doctor and a counselor in the same moment. Reading the imaging, reading the owner, finding words for something that has no good words. Walking them through what was going to happen. Staying present for the goodbye.
And then.
He washed his hands. Took a breath. And knocked on the next door.
A routine appointment. A healthy dog. A family who had no idea what had just happened in the room next to them, and shouldn’t have to.
Veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession, more than double the general population. That number doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from people who entered medicine because they love animals, who carry the weight of loss as a professional standard, and who are now doing it inside a system that measures them in throughput and billable services.
The corporate takeover didn’t just change who owns the building. It changed the conditions inside it. Production quotas. Metrics. The pressure to upsell diagnostics. Independent vets trying to compete with the buying power of billion-dollar conglomerates while still honoring the reason they got into this in the first place.
Then add the rescues. The underfunded shelters bringing in animals who needed care weeks ago. The pet parents who have been googling and using AI at 2am and come in terrified and sometimes angry. The ones who can’t afford the treatment their pet needs, and the vet who has to navigate that conversation while the next appointment is already waiting.
It can be a vicious cycle. And the people caught inside it mostly got there because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
That's not someone to fight. That's someone worth fighting for.
What’s Happening in the Exam Room
There are aspects worth understanding about what happens inside the appointment itself.
A Chihuahua and a Great Dane do not receive the same dose of a human medication. But standard vaccine boosters? Often administered at the same volume, regardless of body weight or size. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to biology. There shouldn’t be one when it comes to vaccination either.
The link between repeated vaccination and injection-site tumors is not a fringe concern. It is documented science. The European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases has published formal guidelines on feline injection-site sarcomas, aggressive and invasive tumors that develop at vaccine sites. A causal relationship between certain adjuvanted vaccines and sarcoma development was established epidemiologically and led to the formation of a dedicated task force in 1996. The research has been ongoing for thirty years.
Vaccines are not the enemy. But automatic, annual, same-dose-for-every-animal boosters without ever asking whether the animal actually needs them — that’s where the questions should start.
On spaying and neutering: The guidance has changed. The old advice was spay or neuter early. What we know now is different. Wait until at least two years of age. And when possible, consider procedures that preserve the hormonal system: an ovary-sparing spay rather than a full removal, or a vasectomy rather than full castration. The endocrine system matters. Sterilizing an animal too early has consequences we are only beginning to fully understand. Your vet may not bring this up. Ask anyway.
On titer testing: Before your pet receives another round of automatic boosters, ask about titer testing. It’s a blood test that measures whether your animal already has sufficient antibodies, whether they actually need the vaccine or whether their immune system is already doing its job.
Here’s what most corporate practices won’t tell you: it doesn’t have to cost several hundred dollars. Have your vet draw the blood vial, usually around $20. Ask them to spin it. Drop it in a prepaid mailer and send it to an independent lab. Results come back in about a week. Total cost: around $80. That information is worth far more than a reflexive booster your pet may not need.
What If We’ve Accepted the Wrong Ceiling
Here’s a question worth sitting with.
When did we decide that ten or twelve years was just how long dogs live?
It wasn’t always the answer. Not all that long ago, dogs routinely lived into their late teens. Record holders have lived to 29 and 30 years old. These aren’t flukes. They’re data points. They tell us something about what’s possible when an animal is fed real food, kept out of the chronic inflammation cycle, and cared for by someone paying close attention and asking the right questions.
So here’s the question nobody is asking loudly enough.
If we are doing everything right, if the veterinary industry has never been bigger, the pet food market has never been more sophisticated, and we have never spent more money on our animals, then why are dogs living shorter lives than ever before?
We have accepted a lifespan for our animals that is a fraction of what may actually be possible. And we’ve done it so thoroughly that we don’t even question it anymore. Ten years feels normal. Twelve feels like a gift. Fifteen feels like a miracle.
What if it isn’t a miracle? What if it’s just what happens when we stop asking why and trust a system run by the almighty dollar?
The chronic ear infections. The allergies. The itchy skin. The tumors showing up in six-year-old dogs. The arthritis in animals that should still be in their prime. We manage these things. We medicate them. We accept them as the cost of having a pet.
But some of the oldest, healthiest animals alive have one thing in common: someone in their life was paying attention. Asking questions. Feeding them real food. Not just managing symptoms. Working to prevent them.
That’s not wishful thinking. That’s a different standard. And we’re allowed to want it.
The conversation that should be happening in every vet visit looks like this: What does the bloodwork tell us? What are they eating, really eating, and what is that doing to their body at a cellular level? What symptoms keep recurring, and why? Are there signs of chronic inflammation we haven’t connected the dots on yet?
That’s not fringe thinking. That’s asking better questions. And those better questions are what transformed Bella from the animal I brought home, broken, infected, shut down, into the dog people meet today and refuse to believe is the same one.
Real food made a staggering difference. Targeted immune support made a difference. Understanding what her body was actually fighting, instead of managing symptoms with another round of medication, made the difference.
That’s what integrative pet health is. It is not anti-veterinary. It is pro-informed. It fills the gaps that a fifteen-minute corporate clinic appointment doesn’t have time to address.
If you’re looking at your pet right now and wondering whether you’re missing something, whether the chronic ear infections or the recurring skin issues or the low energy are being managed instead of solved, that’s exactly the right question.
And if you want to go deeper, real food, root-cause thinking, what an integrative approach actually looks like for your specific animal, that’s exactly what I do.
I’m a certified Integrative Pet Health Coach, and I work with pet owners who are done with the symptom cycle and ready to ask better questions.
Bella did.
If this resonated, subscribe to The Jenn Files. I write about business, money, resilience, and grit — cutting through the noise so you can build something that can’t be broken. That includes the health of the animals who share your life.
Sources
Fortune / Yahoo Finance — Mars veterinary revenue, 284% growth since entering vet space, VCA acquisition ($9.1B), Mars pet care as majority of company revenue
Student Doctor Network — Mars pet care now 60% of $50B annual revenue; nearly 3,000 veterinary hospitals worldwide
privateequityvet.org — Corporate ownership of 30% of general practices, 75% of specialty practices; searchable database of 7,000+ practices
American Economic Liberties Project / Save Our Pets Act — Corporate and PE ownership estimates; 75% specialty
Pitchbook via AAHA — $51.6B poured into veterinary sector by private equity
The Nation — 95% of common pet food brands owned by six global conglomerates
KKR & Co. Inc. SEC proxy statement, fiscal year 2024 — Joseph Bae total compensation $73,087,375; Scott Nuttall total compensation $64,195,805
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2024 — Median annual wage for veterinarians: $125,510
American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), 2025 — Real inflation-adjusted veterinarian salaries roughly equivalent to 2004 levels
European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases (ABCD), Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 2015 — Feline injection-site sarcoma guidelines
Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force, formed 1996 — Epidemiological causal link established 1993
Guinness World Records — Bluey, Australian cattle dog, verified oldest dog at 29 years and 5 months (1910-1939)