As the twenty-first century begins, the veterinary profession would appear to be undergoing a profound transformation, to such an extent that its representatives are worried that it might disappear, despite it has been able to build and then defend its monopoly and jurisdiction over the years. Professional organisations are doing their best to identify the causes of this evolution, to measure its implications and to control its effects. In Europe and the USA, since 2015 several of these organisations have set up outlook work groups in order to take stock of the challenges facing vets and to suggest action plans to ensure the sustainability of their profession. These are the “Vet Futures” programmes, initiated by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) and the British Veterinary Association (BVA), taken up and adapted by their French counterparts, the Conseil supérieur de l’ordre vétérinaire (CSOV) and the Syndicat National des Vétérinaires Libéraux (SNVEL) and then by the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE). In the USA, similar reflection has been undertaken by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) since the early 2010s, particularly with regard to workforce needs in accordance with the sector or in case of a health crisis, and in respect of evolutions in the veterinary services market.

The various reports that have been produced have a great deal in common. They are concerned about the attractiveness of the profession and the increasingly difficult working conditions, the difficulties encountered when setting up in private practice, such as situations of burn out and stress at work on the one hand, and unemployment or under-employment on the other. Changes in the sociodemographic composition of the professional group are often accused of being at the origin of these problems. The generational renewal that has for two or three decades gone hand in hand with a high level of feminisation and with recruitment among populations that are more urban and from higher socioeconomic strata would seem to explain veterinarians’ disaffection for farm animal practice, in favour of small animal medicine. This shift in specialisation structureFootnote 1 is often considered to be a sign of the decline of the veterinarian’s social status (historically speaking, farm animal medicine has been the dominant practice upon which the profession has symbolically relied to construct and defend its monopoly) and of his/her employment status (the development of salaried work) or remuneration (stagnation of average income). Moreover, this profound transformation of the sociodemographic composition is impacting the contribution that vets make to animal health and food safety policies – whereas historically they have always played an essential role in veterinary public health policy, in relation to both livestock disease management and food safety.

In this context, the social sciences mobilised to make a direct contribution to the debate. The Lowe’sFootnote 2 report (2009) on veterinarians in the agricultural and agri-food sector recommends that vets rethink both their place in public policy by reasserting their role as protectors of public health and their relationship with their clients (i.e. livestock farmers) by broadening their range of services and evolving the economic model of veterinary businesses. Other publications tend to put into perspective what is sometimes described as a crisis: historian A. Woods (2011), for example, shows how the British veterinary profession had to face these same challenges throughout the twentieth century (Loveday reports in 1938 and 1944, Northumberland report in 1964 and Swann report in 1975). She believes that the pertinent question is instead to ask why it is always the same issues that are raised as challenges and/or threats to think about the future of the profession and demand forms of protection for its status. She considers that the current debate simply reflects a new phase in the recomposition of the veterinary profession, through an updating of the usual issues involved in the process of professionalisation (in particular the participation in policymaking and competition with other professional groups). These aspects are indeed regularly put to the test (health crises, reforms, demographic evolutions) in such a way that maintaining a professional monopoly is a constant challenge – indeed, one that requires continuous intervention by the State (Bonnaud and Fortané 2018).

Above and beyond these direct contributions to the ongoing debate, numerous works of social science research examine the characteristics and evolutions of the veterinary profession without explicitly linking them to the concerns of professional organisations. They do however make it possible to gain a better understanding of ongoing changes. Our article aims to present an overview of this social science literature, to highlight the questions that structure it and to analyse what they have to say as part of the current debate on the veterinary profession. The texts included in our article mainly relate to the fields of history, sociology, political sciences and social geography, although multidisciplinary or management studies publications are sometimes referred toFootnote 3. They were published in either French or English and cover a period of almost 30 years. It should be noted however that the rate at which they were published increased significantly over the last 10 years.Footnote 4 The main object of these publications is to study veterinary practices and knowledge or the profession itself; we also added articles on animal health policies and on human-animal relations where vets play a central role. Our overview is also geographically limited: the research focuses essentially on west-European countries and the USA, sometimes on the international space as such, without us being able to determine here if this is an effect relating to language choices for publications or to scientific production itself.

This article is organised around the analysis of four major structuring dynamics that professional organisations regularly single out as being the cause of the current “crisis”. After a brief recap of the history of veterinarian professionalisation, we examine the sociodemographic evolutions currently traversing the profession (1), followed by the transformation and modes of practices linked on the one hand to the increasing number of pets (2) and on the other to changes in farming systems (3). Finally, we set out the different ways in which public authorities govern veterinary public health (4).

The veterinary profession’s sociodemographic (r)evolutions

In order to understand the recent changes in the veterinary profession, it will be helpful to look back at the circumstances and conditions that allowed them to emerge. Many countries have carried out research on the history of the veterinary profession. They include Sweden (Hellberg 1990), Netherlands (Koolmees 1999), Norway (Elvbakken 2017), Germany (Mitsuda 2017), France (Hubscher 1999; Berdah 2018) and the USA (Jones 2003). British studies on the history of animal health policies also allow us to document this dynamic (Woods 2004; Waddington 2006; Hardy 2010). All of these works underline not only the central role of the State in this matter but also the uncertain nature of the process. While a huge number of veterinary schools came into being at the end of the eighteenth century, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that vets were able to rely on the monopolies of practice conferred upon them by the public authorities, to inspect meat, to fight contagious diseases and, in southern countries (former British colonies in particular), to manage tropical diseases (Brown and Gilfoyle 2010). Vets were thus able to set themselves apart from the many other professions involved in animal care (farriers, blacksmiths and other “empirical” occupations) that challenged their expertise. In Europe, the veterinarians’ early rallying to Pasteur’s microbial vision played a major role. By strengthening the link between human and animal medicine, it made veterinarian members of healthcare professions in their own right and contributed to the professionalisation of their scientific expertise on contagious diseases (rabies, glanders, tuberculosis, swine fever) which made it possible for them to establish their legitimacy in State inspection and enforcement of animal health and food safety policies (Berdah 2012; Woods 2013a). As for field practitioners, however, the process of professionalisation was more irregular. In France, for example, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that independent vets were able to impose their presence on livestock farms, when a series of laws introduced the “health tripod” model that established vets, farmers who were organised into “health defence groups” and state-controlled veterinary services as the protectors of herd health (Berdah 2010). All in all, veterinarians’ professional jurisdiction is based on a historically constituted dual monopoly: food hygiene (nowadays reconfigured by the notion of food safety) and animal health. In Europe, of the countries whose history is known, only Great Britain escapes this model, as between the two wars, British vets lost their mandate for slaughterhouse inspection. For the contemporary period, the regulation of the profession has been the subject of little research, including the classical analysis of internal disciplinary bodies (Blass 2010; Hobson-West and Timmons 2015).

The dynamic of feminisation

This story is almost 250 years old. First and foremost, it throws the spotlight on men with links to the rural world, either due to their origins or to their place of work. Yet, over recent years, women have come to comprise more than half of the profession in many countries: 55% in the USA (American Veterinary Medical Association 2016), 53% in Europe (Federation of Veterinarians of Europe 2015) and of which 51.4% in France, for example (Observatoire National Démographique de la Profession Vétérinaire 2018). This evolution is even more remarkable in that it was so fast – in the USA, female vets represented 8% of the profession in 1970 and 50% in 2008 (Irvine and Vermilya 2010). A similar dynamic is underway in Switzerland, where 80% of veterinarians under the age of 30 were women in 2006 (Surdez 2009), and in France where women have made up between 2/3 and 3/4 of yearly intakes in veterinary schools since the early 2000s (Observatoire National Démographique de la Profession Vétérinaire 2018). The question of feminisation is thus central to the reflections of professional organisations: this massive intake of women explains the decline in farm animal practice, the stagnation of income levels and the development of salaried employment and part-time working. Social science research shows that the sociodemographic evolutions of the veterinary profession require more detailed analysis.

The analyses of feminisation are taking two complementary directions: on the one hand, they examine the reduction in the number of men wishing to become veterinarians and, on the other, the look at temporality and women’s modes of access to the profession. On the first point, Lincoln (2010) analysed the statistics for entry into American veterinary schools between 1976 and 1995. She highlights the lesser interest that male students showed in the veterinary curriculum, which she puts down to the stagnation of salary levels and to a lower prestige compared to other medical professions. The profession had thus become less attractive, in a context where the number of available places was increasing. On the second point, research above all stresses a male-dominated profession’s reluctance to accept women into its ranks. For example, analysing the professional trajectories of female vets in Great Britain between the two wars, Hipperson (2018) points out that even the men who were the most in favour of women joining the profession felt that they should stick to laboratory work or to looking after pets. She also shows that if women became owners of veterinary surgeries, it was largely because existing veterinarians did not wish to employ them or go into partnership with them. Regarding France, Hubscher (1999) highlights the reluctance to accept women expressed by both the rural world in general and the professional group. Up until the 1990s, livestock farmers and veterinarians shared the argument that denounced the physical weaknesses of women, deeming them to be too fragile for a job that was to a very large extent rural and essentially involved large animals. The historian also underlines the misogyny of the professional elites, who took a long time to accept women into union, ordinal and teaching bodies, 1970s and 1980s included. Irvine and Vermilya (2010) describe very similar phenomena for the USA. They insist on the fact that for a long time, schools constituted barriers for entry into the professional group. For various reasons, female students were discouraged from taking up this type of study: women supposed the lack of aptitude for scientific studies, the inappropriate nature of certain aspects of the job, particularly certain surgical acts (castration) and finally the defiant attitude of farmers’ representatives and former students on the boards of veterinary schools, as they believed that women were likely to leave the profession during the course of their career for family reasons.

Feminisation and employment status

Although women are now in the majority in the veterinary profession in many European countries, they still do not practice with statuses comparable to those of men: in France, they are more usually salaried employees for example. Many works of research have raised these issues. Some discuss an age effect. In France, 70.4% of male veterinarians aged between 30 and 39 are self-employed, yet this is true of only 45.8% of women vets. In the older age categories, however, the gap is smaller: 86.8% of men and 74.7% of women over 50 practice as self-employed workers. Women set up their business at a later age (36 years old on average as compared to 31 for men) and are less often business owners (31% of women practice on their own, as against 50% of men) (Charles 2004). In Europe, the situation appears to be more contrasted: in Scandinavian countries, known to be more egalitarian and favourable to equality between women and men, 80% of women own a practice (e.g. compared to 40% in France). Other works counterbalance the notion of a change due to feminisation and highlight the new aspirations of young veterinarians. In France, one study thus showed that newcomers to the profession, young men and young women alike, have the same desire to find a better reconciliation between work and home life, something that tends to favour the status of salaried employee or partner (Paulet 2011).

Tracing the history of veterinary practices in Switzerland, Surdez (2009) explains that they were often based on the family business model, involving the entire family and a significant amount of invisible work by women: greeting clients, answering the phone, accounting, looking after the home and children’s education, etc. When female vets open their own practices, they need the same type of aid. This being rarely available from their husbands/partners, they are forced to set up partnerships or take on employees, thus mechanically increasing the size of the practice. Having interviewed female vets who decided to set up practice, Irvine and Vermilya (2010) suggest that women set limits to their professional projects: they negotiate lower salaries, more frequently consider the administrative and economic difficulties relating to setting up a practice and tend to charge less for their services than men, which makes their practices more fragile and less profitable. In establishing the profile of an entrepreneurial female vet, Henry et al. (2016) highlight the fact that she does not really consider herself to be a managing director and that she undervalues her invention (a simulator to teach students how to properly examine cows).

The “feminine nature” of small animal practice

The feminisation of the practice is also associated with the evolution in veterinary specialisation, in particular to the increasing proportion of small animal practices and to the detriment of caring for livestock. We have seen how women were encouraged to opt for small animal practice in Britain between the wars. Almost 100 years later, it would seem that this orientation is still perceptible. In the USA, women represent 64.7% of vets in small animal practice (American Veterinary Medical Association 2016). In France, 38.6% of women exclusively practice small animal medicine, compared to 24.7% of men. Conversely, 21.9% of men work exclusively with livestock, as against 7.9% of women. These data should nevertheless be interpreted with caution. If we view them as absolute values and introduce the age variable, we find that for veterinarians under the age of 40, while there are indeed far more women in small animal practice (5141 W/2168 M), there are actually also more women working with livestock (1659 W/1376 M) (Observatoire National Démographique de la Profession Vétérinaire 2018). Several conclusions must be drawn: firstly, the assertion that female vets avoid farm animal practice must be put into perspective; secondly, the majority of men also opt for small animal practice. These results need to be compared to the analyses of Hughes (1971) on the articulation between careers, i.e. people’s trajectories during their life cycles, and the employment streams that organise the systems of professional activity: it is not therefore surprising that newcomers join the segment that is the most dynamic in terms of recruitment. For veterinarians, this means that the demand for small animal care is currently the most buoyant activity for young professionals.

Within this global recomposition, the place of female vets is a particularly delicate one. While feminisation is sometimes presented as being at the origin of this evolution, the interviews conducted as part of the research by Surdez (2009), Irvine and Vermilya (2010) and Henry et al. (2016) show that all female vets continue to define themselves in terms of the traditional image of the veterinarian, i.e. a man working in a farm animal practice. They are thus led to dissociate themselves from the preconceived idea, whereby a woman’s nature is more suited to caring for small animals, and to put forward the argument that an attraction for biology and science is more important than a love of animals. Similarly, they must justify their capacity for farm animal practice by explaining that strictly medical qualities (diagnosis, therapy, etc.) are more important than physical strength, which can be compensated by finding help from others – from the farmers, for example. Clarke and Knights (2019) also defend the idea of a masculine culture within the veterinary profession, meaning that women are still having to prove themselves, even in their day-to-day work.

Research thus examines wide-ranging sociodemographic evolutions through the issue of feminisation. It is clear that the veterinary profession is undergoing a profound change, leading to evolutions in the way it functions, its practices and the type of expertise it involves. Feminisation is just one aspect of these transformations and cannot be elevated to an overriding explanatory principle. Social science research thus makes it possible to underline other dynamics that are currently traversing the profession, in both small and farm animal medicine.

Small animal practice: between patients and clients

Whether or not we associate it with the feminisation dynamic, the development of small animal medicine is considered to be a major issue for professional organisations who see it as a profound transformation of the veterinary profession, disconnected from its historical foundations at the service of livestock farming and animal health policy. Nowadays, the majority of veterinarians specialise in pet care. This is true of 65% of veterinarians in the USA and of 48% of European veterinarians surveyed by the FVE. This percentage even goes as high as 82% in Luxembourg, 77% in Slovakia and 60% in France. In France, it is believed that small animal practice only emerged as from the 1960s, alongside the new status of family pets (Hubscher 1999). The profession’s evolution towards small animal practice is thus described as rapid and recent. Studying the British case, Gardiner (2014) suggests an alternative chronology and places the emergence of the small animal practice in the interwar period.Footnote 5 He shows that it first came into being through charitable organisations, against the profession itself: vet representatives disputed the social utility of caring for pets, and people who did so were commonly referred to as “weak”, as opposed to “those who have a real job”. In order to help the poorer categories of the population, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor (PDSA) charity opened a large number of dispensaries for poorly cared for dogs. The veterinary profession was concerned about this competition; especially as it was going through a period of uncertainty regarding its future, due to the diminishing equine population, with horses no longer being the essential auxiliary for everyday life. Skipper (2019) nevertheless provides a historiographic clarification by showing that aright at the beginning of the twentieth century (Edwardian period), a small group of veterinarians was already specialising in small animal medicine to meet the needs of the London elite participating in the “dog fancy”. They had to face competition from other professionals (doctors included) who were drawn to this lucrative, albeit small, market. Ultimately, veterinarian involvement in small animal medicine was linked to competition with other professional groups (and was therefore embedded in the classic dynamics of the professionalisation process), at first driven by the defence of their status and of a mandate (animal care) rather than by any desire for professional expansion. In the second half of the twentieth century, the rise of small animal medicine was reinforced by the creation of specific professional organisations (e.g. BSAVA in 1957 in the UK), a dynamic of clinical specialisation (such as radiology or small animal orthopaedics) or the development of corporate veterinary clinics (Gardiner et al. 2015), as well as more external dynamics such as the increase of the demand for companion animals and of diverse markets like pet foods and insurances (Corr et al. 2015).

Day-to-day work in veterinary practices

Sociology literature on small animal medicine essentially concentrates on life in veterinary practices, on analysing relationships between professionals and on interactions between veterinarians, owners and their animals. Research on veterinary consultations is of general theoretical interest, looking at the role that the animals play during the interactions. Indeed, most works use an approach inspired by symbolic interactionism while at the same time underlining the need to evolve it by taking account of the role of the animals (and not just of human beings or objects) during the interactions. Their authors often contributed, at a later date, to the field of animal studies. C. Sanders’ work, published since the early 1990s, is particularly representative of this movement. In his first article, based on participant observation over a period of several months, he studies interactions during consultations with clients that are a “problem” for the vets and attempts to characterise the different types of pet owners. Here he tests a classic result of the interactionist theory of professions which states that professionals deem clients to be good or bad depending on whether they facilitate or hinder the smooth running of the activity; this then makes it possible to build a typology of the practice’s (human) clients (Sanders 1994). In 1999, returning to his observations in the same practice looked at the patients and built a new typology, this time of the animals. At the heart of his reflection, he placed the uncomfortable role of the vets, who have to do their best for the animal-patient while at the same time satisfying the needs of the human-client who is their fellow man, who has called upon their services and who is paying them (Sanders 1999).

Other works look at the connection between profession and organisation: do vets remain professionals or do they lose their specific skills when they work for organisations? Lammers and Garcia (2009) examine this question through observation of a veterinary call centre. Several dozen veterinarians, toxicologists and veterinary assistants work on the phones in the centre, on a platform that is open 24/7 and 365 days/year. The staff are split into areas of competency, with a high proportion of experts in veterinary toxicology, and are subject to the pressure of answering calls and of being constantly monitored. This research shows that the veterinary knowledge and know-how, in particular the mobilisation of scientific skills to meet specific situations, but also the emotional work in cases involving the death of an animal, do not disappear when vets work in organisations. They remain professionals and are not mere employees answering the phone. Sanders’ (2010) approach is to study veterinary practices as organisations; he looks at the activity and interactions with the assistants, mainly women, many of whom have not followed any specific curriculum. He highlights the fact that there are different aspects of the “dirty work” that they are given: they have to come to terms with filth, with excrements, with a whole range of messy and smelly bodily fluids (blood, urine, pus, etc.) and also with the carcasses of animals that could not be saved or which were euthanised in the practice. He uses the expression “emotional dirty work” to describe activities that cause strong emotions, often grief, anguish or anger when faced with the death of an animal, its suffering or that of its owners. Compensating for this aspect of the job involves valorising love for animals and working alongside the vets, as part of a team, to care for them and to save their lives. The relationship with the animals is thus a central part of compensating for the “dirty work” that has to be done in a veterinary practice. Hamilton’s research (Hamilton 2007, 2013) helps to broaden these conclusions to encompass the case of mixed practices. In particular she shows that the relationship with “dirt” varies, depending on whether one is caring for pets or livestock (dirt is unacceptable in the first case and symbolically valorised in the second). Like with any other organisation, in veterinary practices, the division of work is based on forms of social and symbolic that are especially important.

The emotional work of veterinarians

Generally speaking the question of emotions is central to the work carried out in veterinary practices: researchers observe the emotions of clients faced with the suffering, death or euthanasia of their pets; they also analyse the emotional work of the vets, which must allow rational decisions to be made (to end the life of a suffering animal) while at the same time allow the expression of emotions by clients who are often caught between guilt and grief (Morris 2012a; Mills 2016). Research demonstrates an evolution in small animal practice: whereas euthanasia used to be, at least up until the 1980s, performed out of sight of owners, the majority of the latter now wishes to be present while their pet is put to death. This request, deemed legitimate by the interviewed vets, nevertheless increases their stress and requires the mobilisation of skills relating to compassion and empathy which are the opposite of what vet have learned, i.e. to maintain a distance in order to make the best decisions. Many of the interviewed vets believe that the ability to cope with these delicate situations is the key to maintaining long-term relationships with their clients (Morris 2012b). Not all requests for euthanasia are for the same reasons, and several articles examine cases where vets consider requests for an animal to be put to death to be unfounded (often for the personal convenience of the owner). The observations thus take account of the way in which the vets negotiate, accept or refuse to perform the act and how they categorise the requests by separating those they feel to be acceptable from those that are not (Sanders 1995). These articles show that the morale of veterinarians is not an intangible proper to those concerned but a construct linked to experiences and to professional practiceFootnote 6.Certain surgical acts that cause suffering to animals are also examined from the angle of moral and professional dilemma, such as the declawing of cats (only authorised in some countries): Atwood-Harvey (2005) shows how this controversial act, when it cannot be avoided through discussion with the owners, is nevertheless performed, but only under certain conditions and not by all the members of the clinic she studies, the managing vet considering that it falls upon him/her to take responsibility for the difficult decisions. More generally, Gautier (2001) draws up an inventory of the “neutralisation techniques” used by veterinarians in situations that are ethically deviant or uncomfortable, when behaviours and convictions are in conflict with one another. In order of importance, she notes the weight of financial justification (the veterinary practice is not a charity, and it needs to bring in money) and the often poorly substantiated idea that “everyone does it”.

Small animal vets are therefore essentially studied through the prism of their practices, of the way the surgeries where they work are organised, and of their emotions. Although the latter aspect could feed the debate on the working conditions of vets and situations of stress and burn-out, such a link is for the time being rarely established in social science research (it is more frequently established in veterinary literature), which we might put down to the type of approach used, which does not integrate the longitudinal dimension or the careers of the vets. There is also a lack of research on the development and transformations of the small animal medicine market, in particular the rise of large corporate clinics and its effects on professional skills, knowledge and business models. Finally, while small animal practice is now the profession’s most common activity, this is due to historical dynamics that have nothing to do with feminisation or generational renewal and which are not the consequence of a decline in in farm animal activity. Its development is explained instead by the growing need for small animal care (and as a consequence of the pet market) over almost a century and the necessity of not giving other professional groups the opportunity to lay claim to a mandate for animal health.

Rural practice: a protean activity

As it is too simple (simplistic) to relate the decline in farm animal medicine to the emergence of small animal practice or to the dynamic of feminisation, we need to explore the internal dynamics of this historical segment of the veterinary profession. In Europe, between just 15 and 35% of veterinarians work with livestock, and there are significant differences between countries (e.g. over 30% in Denmark, Holland and Belgium, compared to less than 20% in France, Spain or Sweden) (FVE 2015). In the USA, they number no more than 4.6% (American Veterinary Medical Association 2016). However, while farm animal practice mainly concerns bovine care, the exact scope of this area of activity is not entirely clear and has evolved over time. Depending on the sector, the country and even the era, the role, knowledge, practices and professional and economic models of farm animal vets vary enormously. Research thus puts into perspective the notion of a decline in farm animal activity and instead highlights the profound changes that have been taking place in this segment for more than half a century.

Veterinary expertise in livestock farming

Historically speaking, the presence of vets in livestock farming has always been linked to their knowledge of infectious diseases and their mastery of prophylactic techniques such as vaccination (Berdah 2018). The other facets of livestock management, such as nutrition or reproduction, fell not to veterinary medicine but to animal husbandry, to be later given over to agronomists in the second half of the nineteenth century (Hubscher 1999; Hellec 2009). However, as from the 1930s, and even more certainly after the Second World War, livestock farming changes in favour of models oriented towards productivity and profitability brought this jurisdictional separation into opposition. The need to medicalise livestock farms above and beyond the management of infectious diseases led veterinarians to broaden their expertise to cover issues that were more technical than health based and to evolve both their scientific knowledge and their medical practices. In the bovine sector, for example, they gradually became involved in the management of so-called “production” diseases (i.e. not necessarily infectious and certainly not zoonotic) such as mastitis (Woods 2014) and of reproduction problems (Woods 2007).

So now, in response to the farm animal practice crisis, professional organisations call for the development of “preventive veterinary medicine” (PVM), through which to rethink the ways that vets intervene and are paid. Yet they are in fact entering into a complex history, because the nature and scope of farm animal activity have always been in tension. The broadening of veterinary expertise, allowing vets to go beyond their role as clinicians and emergency physicians, is in fact a longstanding dynamic. For example, as early as the 1950s in Great Britain or the 1970s in France, there were attempts to develop preventive approaches that profoundly changed the professional conception of animal health. It was henceforth viewed on the scale of the herd rather than of the individual animal, combined with questions of nutrition, biosecurity, building management, etc. and integrating productivity and profitability issues through consultation with the farmers. Social science researchers therefore have to understand why this PVM is having trouble establishing itself, instead of striving to reinvent the approaches that have been discussed and experimented with for half a century. In Great Britain, Woods (2013b) shows that as from the 1970s, it was mainly the reduction in government support for this type of service (initially developed as a means to accompany agricultural modernisation), combined with a lack of interest from livestock farmers, which signed the decline of PVM. As for France, Fortané (2017) points out that in the 1980s and 1990s, it was essentially a resistance from a large number of vet practitioners and the integration of this approach (and of its specific tools such as statistical studies) by the scientific and technical support departments of agricultural organisations, which led to the veterinary profession being dispossessed of this growing interest in matters of prevention.

There are however certain sectors (industrial pig and poultry production in particular) where these approaches have been more successful. Mixing microbiology, epidemiology, expertise in nutrition and reproduction and technico-economic considerations relating to livestock farming productivity, poultry and porcine vets have for a long time been working in a manner very different from that of so-called “large animal” vets. In Germany, veterinarians became an essential component of poultry production as from the 1970s, when this sector began to industrialise its organisation (vertical concentration of the sector and development of factory farms). Vets thus ceased to be animal doctors and became “health managers” whose work was directed towards the technico-economic objectives of productivity and profitability (Thoms 2015). So the evolution of veterinary expertise with animals went hand in hand with the overall changes in livestock farming, in particular with the medicalisation generally related to agricultural intensification. Smith-Howard (2017) shows how the development of the drug market in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s helped strengthen the preventive approaches of veterinarians who had to differentiate themselves from the newcomers to the animal care market, drawn by the profits to be made from drug sales (not reserved at that time to vets). In France, the introduction of vaccine prophylaxes also allowed the veterinary profession to reinforce the legitimacy of its presence on livestock farms and to construct its animal health expertise (Berdah, in this issue). The development of the drug market also led, in the 1970s and 1980s, to the construction of a business model that made drug delivery the main source of income for veterinarians, despite the fact that they were offering farmers an increasingly diverse range of services (Fortané, in this issue). Although the history and operation of the veterinary drug market are still rarely studied, this series of research shows the extent to which the capture and preservation of a clientele, in conjunction with intra- and extra-professional competition, influence the definition of veterinary activity. Complementary works examine the economic activity of veterinary practices and the vet-farmer relations that result.

New economic and professional models for veterinary practices?

As one major issue, the prospective reports of professional organisations highlight the renewal of veterinary practices’ economic and professional models, in other words, how they envisage new ways of practicing the profession of the farm animal veterinarian. According to Ruston et al. (2016), British vets generally share this view: they are seeing a reduction in prophylaxes for public authorities (for the most part, tests for bovine tuberculosis), competition from other professions visiting livestock farms (particularly technical consultants advising farmers) and express a certain reluctance to demand payment for the services they provide. In this context, 75% say they have changed their way of operating, placing more importance on prevention. Yet only a minority have actually changed their modes of remuneration (contractualisation applies to less than 10% of the clients of practices using this method), and there is generally no proactive action to solicit new clients. A team of researchers in economics and management studies has also examined the shift towards a diversification of the veterinary services offering while at the same time stressing the fact that transitions towards this type of model vary in accordance with sector and geographical zone (Adam et al. 2014). They also point out the poor training in accounting and management (with regard to both technical know-how and interpersonal skills) provided by veterinary schools (Henry and Treanor 2012). In tracing the trajectory of a young female vet, Henry et al. (2016) define the “sustainable” modalities for setting up a veterinary practice in a rural area: its location, its personnel, its economic and contractual model and finally its goods or services that meet client demand (laboratory analysis, breeding audit, technical advice, etc.). The question of business models for veterinarian activity, i.e. the ways to construct practice profitability and the remuneration of the vets, is also central to recent works on the veterinary drug market (Minviel et al. 2019). In the end, all of this economic and management studies proposes interesting avenues of research but nevertheless still provides little information about the new forms of veterinary businesses that seem to be rapidly developing in numerous countries (particularly franchises, networks and other “corporations” of veterinary surgeries) or about the global transformation of the veterinary services market.

The matter of setting up a practice, and of its economic sustainability in particular, is also central to professional concerns in France. Several reports were produced on “veterinary deserts”Footnote 7, these rural spaces that lack specialist skills to care for animals because it would no longer be viable for young professionals to set up or take over a practice in these areas. In this regard, an interdisciplinary research team has shown that when vets set up a practice, it is less in response to professional criteria (farm density, the need for veterinary services) than to extra-professional dimensions relating to regional attractiveness, even though this result is more marked for small than for farm animal practice. So employment opportunities for spouses/partners, the proximity of public services (schools, hospitals) and leisure/cultural activities are especially relevant to veterinarians’ choices, and this is even more true for men than for women. Finally, the presence of other vets in the region – and once again more for extra-professional reasons, such as sociability – is also an important factor (Truchet et al. 2017). Incidentally, these results, in part counterintuitive with the professional conception of the problem, corroborate those from similar studies carried out in the USA (Wang et al. 2012) and Canada (Olfert et al. 2012). Moreover, the researchers point out that there is little statistical objectivation of these “veterinary deserts” by public authorities or professional organisations and that the problems of “rural decline” and “territorial meshing” essentially constitute an argument to legitimise other demands, such as aid for practice creation or a softening of the numerus clausus to restrict the arrival of veterinarians trained abroad (Veterra 2015).

Another way of studying the question of setting up a practice is to look at the international migration of veterinarians. G. Enticott examines this phenomenon by observing the migratory trajectories of British vets who move abroad, in this case to New Zealand (Enticott 2018), and those who come to practice in the UK (Enticott 2019). He believes that the neoliberal changes to animal health policies that have been taking place over the last two or three decades – and that he has also studied (Enticott 2014) – helped to make mobility part of the veterinarian’s professional identity. The development of slaughterhouse inspection activities thus reinforced a mobility that was both geographical (to receive training and look for jobs) and professional (vets changing activity by working for public authorities); at the same time, the division of work in large veterinary practices encouraged the recruitment of foreign technicians and vets to do the “dirty work”. So we can see that above and beyond the global evolution in economic and professional models, we also need to look at veterinary work, i.e. at both relations with clients and life within the practices, in order to gain a more detailed understanding of what constitutes the profession of farm animal veterinarian.

Veterinary work with livestock

Sociological research on animal health has mainly focused on the practices of livestock farmers. Yet certain works have also examined veterinary work with farm animals. In his work on the management of bovine tuberculosis, G. Enticott shows the different points of view that can be held by farmers and vets regarding ways of seeing disease as a problem (or not) and strategies for dealing with itFootnote 8. Whether it is a case of interpreting screening tests and the opportunity to perform them, of the implementation of management methods (biosecurity, vaccination, slaughter of bovines or badgers), or of attitudes towards disease (exterminate it, control it, live with it), there is considerable flexibility in veterinary practices, which is precisely what allows effective and “locally universal” disease management (Enticott 2012b; Enticott and Wilkinson 2013). This attention to the diverse ways of approaching health issues, particularly among actors whose knowledge, tools and roles within management systems are intrinsically different (e.g. farmers, vets and epidemiologists) is also found in literature via the notions of “ontologies” or “political ecologies” of animal diseases (Law and Mol 2011; Fortané 2015; Robinson 2017). These make it possible to underline the fact that the definition of health problems such as tuberculosis or antimicrobial resistance relies on medical or political categories that remain quite heterogeneous according to the actors who mobilise them. These categories thus never manage to fully embrace the phenomena they are meant to label, leaving some parts partially “imperceptible” or ignored (Helliwell et al. 2019), or sometimes giving opportunity to new practices, knowledge and instruments to emerge in order to cope with these porous and unstable “veterinary borderlands” (Enticott 2017). With this regard, veterinary epidemiology, in its different versions, is certainly a form of expertise flexible enough to arrange and enact various subjectivities, materialities and geographies of animal diseases (Enticott and Ward 2019). A certain number of works thus try to examine vet-farmer relations from this perspective.

Hamilton (2018) examines the relational skills that these interactions require and proposes a critical analysis of the communication model that vets generally wish to establish. She believes that veterinary expertise involves in-depth communication with farmers and a reciprocal joint apprenticeship that scientific approaches based on evidence-based medicine do not really allow (whereas vets generally see this scientificity as the basis of their professional legitimacy). In her opinion, interactions between vets and farmers should not be seen as a mere transfer of knowledge and skills, because what farmers are asking for is a joint construction of the answer to the problem in order to understand the disease in a manner that makes sense to all concerned. Shortall et al. (2016, 2018) show how vets develop different types of relationship depending on the client and on the way in which they perceive him/her to be a “good farmer”. Vets tend to prefer “commercial farmers” who often own large farms, who have technical, economic and managerial skills and who are inclined to build a close working relationship with them because they consider it to be the best way to set up health management and effective biosecurity rules. Conversely, they have more distant relationships with “true cowmen”, i.e. farmers whose skills are more animal-oriented and who are closer to their herds. This latter category of livestock farmers believes that too much veterinary presence is a sign of poor farm management, while vets consider that these farmers do not allow them to develop the sale of preventive services that are nowadays necessary to the economic sustainability of their practices. Without getting into such a comparative perspective, research by Adam et al. (2017) confirms that the “modern” vision of the veterinarian’s role can be easily deployed on livestock farms that are attached to cooperatives that operate particularly tight health and technico-economic control, so that production can comply with the technical specifications of a range of different labels. In this type of context and even more so in industrial production, animal healthcare is not just the job of the vet-farmer duo but of the vet-farmer-technician trio, with the latter marking the influence that cooperatives exert in the definition of “good farming”.

All in all, social science research shows how the veterinarian’s place in livestock farming is always prone to tensions and ordeals that redefine the job of the farm animal vet (mobility, services, remuneration, etc.) and that it is also impacted by long-term dynamics (the industrialisation of livestock farming, the thwarted development of preventive approaches, etc.). While animal health management constitutes the core of the profession, over the course of various historical controversies, its scope has (and may continue to) expanded to integrate other dimensions (nutrition, reproduction), albeit sometimes only partially (animal welfare, e.g. Poirel, in this issue). It therefore seems difficult to confirm a decline in farm animal activity, even if numerically speaking, the latter represents an ever-decreasing share of the professional group. In fact the nature of this activity evolves as an extension of veterinary expertise, driven by preventive approaches, which explains the sometimes contentious or controversial nature of certain dynamics at work.

Veterinary public health professionals

The final aspect mentioned in the prospective reports prepared by the professional veterinary organisations concerns veterinary public health policies. Here again, social science research tends to show that government support for the profession is changing rather than disappearing (Bonnaud and Fortané 2016, 2018). In France, as in Europe, the veterinary public health sector is governed by veterinarians working for public authorities, who rely on other vets, practicing out in the field, during the implementation of policy measures. In Europe, 19% of veterinarians work for public authorities. But this figure varies enormously from one country to another (e.g. 27% in Poland and Italy but less than 10% in Austria and Belgium), and, above all, it does not distinguish between government vets and those who from time to time carry out public service missions (Federation of Veterinarians of Europe 2015).

One Health

One set of works attempts to gain a better understanding of the contemporary conceptual framework of veterinary public health, particularly its implementation within international bodies, in relation to the One Health concept. This notion emerged in the early 1950s, around the central idea that one should not compartmentalise medicine by species, with humans on one side and animals on the other (Hardy 2003a). Several vets were then to play a central role in promoting integrative medicine, the most famous of whom is C. Schwabe (Cassidy 2018). This ideal received support throughout the second half of the twentieth century, in an increasingly expansive manner: little by little, the protection of wild species, animal welfare and mental health (the comfort provided by pets) became part of veterinary public health, alongside animal health and food safety. Since the H5N1 avian influenza crisis, the One Health concept has gradually been placed on the agenda by the principal international organisations responsible for health, agriculture and food (FAO,Footnote 9 OIE,Footnote 10 WHOFootnote 11). Initially formalised in limited areas, the concept stabilised around 2008 and allowed these organisations to coordinate their actions, in particular around the idea of a “tripartite alliance” (Leboeuf 2011). The One Health initiative also allowed them to prevail over competing organisations (such as the World Bank) and take over international health governance, even if in reality there remained an “organisational silo” mode of operation, whereby each actor continued to mobilise the tried and tested solutions in its repertoire (Jerolmack 2013): for example, during the avian flu crisis, OIE and FAO veterinarians wanted to treat an animal disease that affected birds and could be transmitted to humans, while WHO doctors envisaged a potential pandemic and argued in favour of the generalised implementation of prevention plans against human influenza. One Health thus made it possible to conceptually articulate and to legitimise protean international action (Chien 2013).

This framing of a multitude of public issues around the notion of global risk also allowed international organisations – the WHO and OIE in particular – to increase their bureaucratic authority over countries by using the avian flu crisis to reform their regulatory tools, especially their epidemiological surveillance systems (Figuié 2014). Research has highlighted the imbalance in the relationship between funders relying on communities of veterinary experts and developing countries whose infrastructures (especially healthcare systems) are unable to implement plans that are extremely constraining and which are designed in accordance with the rationales of western countries and which involve certain misdirected measures that in fact tend to amplify the contamination (Scoones 2010; Mather and Marshall 2011). In the cases of Indonesia (Forster and Charnoz 2013) and Vietnam (Figuié et al. 2013; Figuié and Desvaux 2015), veterinary expertise is certainly at the service of public health, but it also (above all?) has the objectives of modernising the productive apparatus and developing the agricultural export sector. These works of research thus take account of the ways in which, in concrete terms, vets perceive and articulate the preservation of public health and the development of agriculture, in line with a model that is more often than not industrial and export based. However, there is still too little research on the situation of vets (and of their knowledge) in spaces of international governance that are perhaps not structured in accordance with the sectorial logic of national policies and where issues different from those that accompanied the professionalisation process in Europe, particularly those relating to developing countries (food security, access to medicines, etc.), affect relationships of cooperation and competition with other professional groups such as doctors and agronomists.

The implementation of veterinary regulations

The implementation of veterinary regulations has also been the object of a considerable amount of research, for the most part focused on food safety or animal health crises (mad cow disease, blue tongue disease, etc.). First and foremost, this series of research is an invitation to find a more accurate characterisation of the expertise of veterinarians who work for their government; it attempts to identify what it is that differentiates their trajectory from that of field practitioners. For France, Fritsch (2009) highlights an evolution in the recruitment of government vets: more often than not, the most senior worked in private practice before joining the government department; they are attached to the region in which they work and are keen to find pragmatic solutions through negotiation, even when they do not fully agree with national instructions. Younger vets envisage more mobile careers and are more interested in the administrative and managerial aspects of their work, with a strong respect for procedures. Regarding vets who work for the European Union, Ollivier (2013a) also draws attention to evolutions in recruitment: the pioneers are recognised experts in their respective countries, often have laboratory experience and are keen to align the different veterinary instruments of member states, for example, by defining screening tests or common surveillance methods based on veterinary science. Nowadays, DG SANTE’sFootnote 12 veterinarians are above all specialists in the European Union itself, and in establishing generic principles and methods, often inspired by management sciences, they aim to align veterinary regulations. Dangy (2018) studies these international government vets in the EU and in bodies in charge of international trade (Codex Alimentarius, WTO) and, using the case of hormone-treated beef, shows how scientific and administrative veterinary knowledge interlink in the construction of an international regulation on drug residues in foods. Other research look at the national administrations in which these vets work, particularly with regard to health crisis management: Foures (2010) studies several cases of canine rabies and points out that management procedures tend to amplify the crises that they are supposed to treat, with vets and doctors continuing to act in accordance with the rules of their professional groups; Alam (2009) shows how government vets used the mad cow crisis to strengthen their positions within the administration (against doctors and engineers) and to obtain better pay and greater consideration.

Other works focus less on the organisation of regulations and more on the way it is actually implemented. They mainly concern veterinary activity in relation to food safety (Surdez et al. 2018) and to slaughterhouse inspection (Muller 2002; Bonnaud and Coppalle 2008; Gautier 2017, 2019). These articles show how knowledge proper to veterinarians, and to anatomical pathology in particular, has a scope that is restricted to meat inspection alone, whereas current food safety inspection supposes a far broader range of action that involves, for example, epidemiological skills, the analysis of organisations and ensuring that health procedures are correctly implemented. Certain works of research also focus on assessing the new division of responsibilities between monitoring services and food companies, resulting from the joint regulations in force within the European Union (Bonnaud and Coppalle 2009; Bonnaud and Coppalle 2013) or from the effect of the state’s neoliberal reforms, characterised in particular by agencification, the delegation of part of public policy to the private sector or the standardisation of protocols and of reporting procedures, which lead to a fragmentation and weakening of the veterinary services (Enticott et al. 2011). All of these works thus shed light on a canonical question in the sociology of professions, which of how organisations control professional activities and the many ruses that the latter must employ in order to maintain the autonomy of their activity and the value of their expertise. These research also shows that despite everything, the State continues to support the profession’s monopoly, not just with regard to its main pillars (health inspection, medicines, prophylaxis, etc.) but also in relation to aspects such as client relations, intra- and extra-professional competition and the management of the animal health market (Bonnaud and Fortané 2018).

Veterinary instruments for the management of animal diseases

Vet practitioners are also concerned by this evolution in regulations, because they help to implement prophylactic and health policy measures, as part of a “mandate” that puts them at the disposal of State services. Generally speaking, sociological and (above all) historical works show that this system, often presented as being harmonious and cooperative, is (and has always been) traversed by numerous tensions and diverging interests (Ollivier 2013b; Berdah 2018). Furthermore, it allows the State to exercise control over the profession (Surdez et al., in this issue). These works of research also allow us to question the nature of the veterinary policy instruments and in particular the respective places of culling and vaccination. Regarding the management of foot-and-mouth disease over the long term (1892–2001) in Great Britain, Woods (2004) examines the longevity of a Victorian policy that is based on massive cull and which has been severely criticised. She highlights the recurrent nature of debates, through to the present time, relating to the choice of culling over vaccination, which above all protects farming’s economic and commercial interests, especially given that the purpose of culling is evolving from a curative to a preventive rationale. Regarding more recent crises, the vaccination-culling controversies have also been documented in the case of foot-and-mouth disease (Wilkinson et al. 2010) and bovine tuberculosis (Cassidy 2019; Lodge and Matus 2014). For France, research shows that vaccination has only been accepted for certain specific periods during which there was an alliance between farmers and vet practitioners who succeeded in influencing the animal health policy defined by government vets: the relationship between vaccine production and the demand of farmers is essential to understanding the distribution of the anthrax spore vaccine (Cassier 2008) while that between farmers and vets is also important when analysing the introduction of preventive medicine for bovine tuberculosis (Berdah 2008). On the issue of antibiotic use in livestock farming, research also shows how the veterinary profession is capable of mobilising to soften regulations and obtain comprises between the protection of public health and the defence of its own professional interests (Fortané 2019). On the other hand, it sometimes loses out when public policy is redirected, as was the case of Norway in the 1990s when it did not support the vaccination of salmon and saw marine biologists take over some of their medicine-related prerogatives (Kjaempenes, in this issue). All in all, analysis of veterinary instruments (their specificities, the ways they are sometimes challenged, etc.) allows us to understand the framing and the implementation of public policies.

Conclusion

This overview has allowed us to analyse four major dynamics of the veterinary profession: more women being recruited than men, thus changing the demographics of the profession; the development of the small animal healthcare market, which is both demographically and symbolically modifying the specialisation structure; the transformations taking place in the agricultural sector, involving a major change in the economic and professional models of farm animal veterinarians, thus leading to the development of salaried and part-time employment, franchised practices, contractualisation, etc.; and finally, the renewal of the veterinary role in public health, henceforth oriented more towards surveillance and less towards prophylaxis, more towards the audit of health control procedures and less towards organoleptic inspection, etc. These dynamics must nevertheless be considered over the long term and from a multifactorial perspective, i.e. the profession is not only subject to external factors but also to evolutions towards which it itself contributes. We nevertheless note that there are issues which are not sufficiently studied by the social sciences of the veterinary profession.

First and foremost, research on feminisation and specialisation remain incomplete, and we know very little about entire sections of the profession or of its history: in a whole range of countries, mixed practice, veterinary work in industrial farming and the history of small animal care, all deserve further examination. And then we know almost nothing about pharmaceutical industries and, globally, the veterinary medicine market, despite the fact that the sale of medicines is presented as being the cornerstone of veterinarian activity and remuneration. More generally, further research could take a more detailed look at both the way veterinary businesses operate and at the animal health market. This would give us a better understanding of the various forms of remuneration and of the economic relationships that vets have with their clients and/or employers, be they farmers, cooperatives and producers’ organisations, food industries or companies dedicated to small animal care. Moreover, this would pave the way for an analysis of relationships of cooperation or competition with other professional groups, such as veterinary nurses, livestock technicians, inseminators, sales representatives from the animal feed industry, pharmacists, etc. In addition, the question of regulation and professional representation (operation of union and veterinarian profession structures, conflict settlement, etc.) remain poorly documented. Finally, while veterinarians’ relationships with certain contemporary issues, such as animal welfare or ethical matters in both veterinary research and practice, are frequently examined in the fields of animal studies and veterinary sciences, they are rarely studied in the social sciences. These are clearly promising avenues for future research.

Secondly, this overview has only allowed us to identify the rare publications that compare countries or regions, examine international spaces as such, or countries in the Global South. For the most part, the social sciences research that we have presented here is based on case studies (management of a disease, ethnography of a veterinary practice, etc.) and rarely offers a global view of the morphology of the veterinary profession or of its market structure. Consequently, a major challenge for future research will be to produce data that can be used in a comparative perspective. There is a clear gap between the type of questions being debated within professional organisations (which are expressed in several countries) and the scientific production (which continues to be linked to a national frame of analysis).

Finally, while the social sciences relating to the veterinary profession have certainly been expanding over recent years, this field of research remains considerably under-invested compared to other emblematic professions such as (human) medicine and law – the latter also currently having to cope with major transformations in their demographics or activity. It is our hope that this special issue will encourage new colleagues to contribute towards an understanding of this fascinating profession.