Japan's Biggest Vet Hospitals Are Burning Out. Smaller Ones Aren't.

Nearly three in 10 veterinarians at Japan's largest companion-animal hospitals say their current pace of work can't continue. Solo practitioners report almost the opposite: just 6% say the same. That five-fold gap comes from a new survey covering roughly 80% of Japan's small-animal veterinary workforce, and it lands at a moment when the most strained hospitals are also the ones most eager to expand the services driving that strain.

Zpeer survey finds workload rises sharply with hospital size

Zpeer, the Tokyo-based company behind Vetpeer, surveyed 314 companion-animal veterinarians across Japan for the report, released August 5. Vetpeer reaches an estimated 80% of the country's small-animal vets, giving the sample unusual reach for a single-market veterinary survey. Workload pressure tracked directly with hospital size: 6% of solo practitioners described their pace as unsustainable, against nearly 30% at hospitals staffing four or more veterinarians.

The same larger hospitals reporting the most strain are also the ones signaling where they want to grow. Across the sample, 35% of vets said they want to expand wellness exams, 20% want to grow endectocide (parasiticide) prescriptions, and 18% prioritized combination vaccinations. Among clinics that currently offer boarding, 33% said they want to reduce it.

"Japanese veterinarians are telling us exactly where they want to grow: preventive care," said Toshiya Morino, Zpeer's chief executive. "For manufacturers and service providers, that is an invitation."

Why Japan's vet workforce data matters for animal health exporters

This is a workforce-capacity story with a distribution message buried inside it, and the second part is more useful to operators than the burnout headline.

Japan's larger animal hospitals are simultaneously the most overworked and the most explicit about wanting to grow preventive-care revenue lines, wellness exams, parasiticides, and combination vaccines, while shedding lower-margin services like boarding. For any animal health manufacturer or veterinary services company weighing entry or expansion in Japan, that is a specific, named opening: sell into hospitals that already want less boarding volume and more prescription-based preventive care, rather than pitching a generic market-entry story.

The scale of Vetpeer's reach is also worth noting on its own. A survey platform touching roughly 80% of a country's small-animal veterinarians is a rare piece of market infrastructure, and Zpeer's own business, selling market research and sales support back to animal health companies, is effectively monetizing the same workforce-capacity data this survey is built on.

This is the first Japan-focused veterinary story The Underbite has covered in 2026, and it's a reminder that international demand signals in animal health don't always come from the companies selling products. Sometimes they come from the platforms that survey the buyers.

Whether preventive-care demand becomes a distribution opening

The signal to watch is whether any Western animal health company (Zoetis, Elanco, IDEXX, or a diagnostics or parasiticide-focused challenger) responds to this kind of workforce data with a Japan-specific product launch or distribution deal. The demand signal here is unusually specific: hospitals want more wellness exams, more endectocide prescriptions, and fewer boarding services, which is a clearer commercial brief than most market-sizing reports provide.

Also worth tracking: whether the workload gap between large and small hospitals widens further. If Japan's biggest companion-animal hospitals keep absorbing preventive-care growth while staffing doesn't keep pace, expect either consolidation pressure toward mid-sized practices or a faster push toward the kind of veterinary staffing and workflow technology that's already reshaping practice economics in the US.

Source: Nearly 3 in 10 Veterinarians at Japan's Larger Companion-Animal Hospitals Say Their Current Pace Is Unsustainable, Zpeer Survey Finds via PR Newswire