Veterinarian as an occupation - US&Japan (En)

Becoming a vet takes passion. Most of the candidates coming to veterinary medical schools already have it, since the competition of entering a vet school is fierce and you have to bring your best effort to pass the exam. This situation is not different between US and Japan. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only less than a half of the applicants were accepted in 2010[1]. But the situation in Japan is way far cutthroat. The chance of being enrolled was only one out of 15.6 applicants in 2009[2]. Although it is not directly comparable because the difference in their education systems, vets are one the most sought job in Japan as well as in the US.

Veterinarians are well-paid as well. In the US the average annual wage was $82,040[3], while in Japan it was 6.2 million yen[4], which is almost about the same.

There were 61,400[5] and 35,379[6] registered veterinarians in US and Japan in 2010, which suggests that the number of veterinarians per capita is larger in Japan than in US (one vet in approximately 5,000 vs 3,600 population, respectively). However, more than 80% of the veterinarians engage in clinical practice in the US[7] while only about 43% of the Japanese vets do so in Japan[8], so the number of clinicians per capita may not differ that much.

The number of pets owned shows a striking difference between the two countries. While there are only twelve million dogs and less than ten million cats owned in Japan [9], US people are enjoying their lives with seventy-eight million dogs and eighty-six million cats[10].

One of the reasons of existence for all the veterinarians in the world is their excellence in zoonosis, or transmissible diseases between animals an humans. One of the most important zoonoses is rabies. Since Japan is a rabies-free country, the highest mission of all the vets in Japan is to prevent the pathogen from coming into the Japanese territory. US is not rabies free therefore the prevention measures are extremely important. Due to the animal control and vaccine program, the number of deaths from human rabies have dramatically decreased from about 100 per year a century ago to about 2 to 3 per year[11].

The discussions are summarized in the following table.

	Japan	US
Competitiveness to enroll in a vet school	One out of 15.6 (2009)	Less than a half is accepted (2010)
Annual average wages (2010)	JPY 6.2MM	$82,040
Number of registered vets (2010)	35,379	61,400
Population per one vet	3,600	5,000
Percentage of vets practicing (2010)	80%	43%
Number of dogs owned as pets (2011)	11,936,000	78,200,000
Number of cats owned as pets (2011)	9,606,000	86,400,000