12 May 2026
Eleanor Goad discusses how the CMA review has opened her, and other vets, up to the same unwelcome question.
Eleanor Goad
Job Title
Image: Ascannio / Adobe Stock
My entire adult life, I’ve become accustomed to answering all manner of questions about my chosen career, writes 2023 graduate vet Eleanor Goad.
“How long did you study for?”; “Was it hard?”; “How can you put animals to sleep?”; “Do you find your job stressful, or do you get to work with puppies all day?”
However, one thing I never expected to be asked again and again, both indirectly on the internet and directly by individual clients across my examination table, was: “Why do you care more about making money than helping my animal?”
To spend your whole life working towards an often taxing, tiring and emotionally draining career for purely altruistic reasons, only to find a year after graduation that a large proportion of the general population thinks your entire profession is an evil money-making ploy… it’s hard not to let it get to you.
I’ve seen a lot of stories recently from fellow vets who say the media storm, as well as the reflection of this rhetoric inside their very consult rooms, has ruined their enjoyment of their careers. That is an incredibly sad reality for an industry where the mental health crisis is already crippling.
Now, the truth is that I’m only a very small fish in the proverbial pond, here. Just a front-line worker down in the trenches doing their best to do right by whatever animal is in front of me at the time. The same can be said of 99.999 per cent of vets worldwide. I have no more say in what I charge for my services than a cashier does the price of eggs, but as a pet owner myself – and, at the end of the day, a human being also – I can see both sides.
While owning a pet is arguably a luxury, do I wish there was an animal equivalent of the NHS? Absolutely. Do I feel that the new CMA “reforms” will impact how I do my job on a daily basis? Quite possibly. For the better? The jury is out.
In a world where vets are regarded as having a financial incentive, being required by law to bring up a price list of every service during every consultation like a sample menu at a restaurant, in my opinion, leads us further from health care and closer to commercialism.
I also feel bad for the independent sector that didn’t get their proper representation next to the large corporations, and am left wondering, after two years of investigations, has anybody been left satisfied? Consumers or veterinary professionals?
In the past few months, I’ve transitioned back from the world of second opinion and specialist care to that of the general practitioner, and that has also meant moving from a client base where insurance is not the norm and where funds are commonly limited and hard choices more frequently made.
Coming back to first opinion practice, that wasn’t something initially on my radar as being one of the hardest parts of the move, but of course it has been. To go from the world of CTs and MRIs, cracking chests and brain surgery, to one where animals are euthanised over unilateral glaucoma, or an uncomplicated femoral fracture is both jarring and incredibly upsetting.
My advice for my fellow vets is simply to continue to provide the excellent and compassionate care that we all strive for every day, and to lean on each other when pitchforks and torches begin to loom in the distance. You know why you got into this business. You know why you go to work each day. Ironically, when the tabloids turn on our industry, it’s with a profit solely in mind.
My advice for pet owners is not to be lulled into a security that these reforms will help with your concerns surrounding the costs of veterinary health care. They do nothing to regulate the sources of the prices to begin with: big drug companies, insurance premiums, the ever-worsening cost of living crisis.
And I know full well that when bad news comes with a financial levy, it is easier to blame the person you can see with your own eyes than to admit the possibility that this, like most things in our life, is the product of greater, global events out of all of our control.