- 7 months ago
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Malaysia is facing a critical shortage of veterinarians. The Department of Veterinary Services recently revealed that the country has just over 2,500 active veterinarians, which falls far short of what’s needed to meet growing demand from livestock farms, research labs, and a booming pet care industry. This shortfall is more than just a numbers problem: it’s a question of national readiness in public health, food safety, and animal welfare. So what will it take to train, retain, and recognise a veterinary workforce, who play such a critical role in our food and health systems? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Professor Dr Goh Yong Meng, Dean of UPM’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.
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00:00Hello and good evening, I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:15where we want you to consider and reconsider what you know of the news of the day. Malaysia
00:20is facing a critical shortage of veterinarians. The Department of Veterinary Services recently
00:27reveals that the country has just over 2,500 active veterinarians. That's far short of
00:35what's needed to meet the growing demand from livestock farms to research labs and a booming
00:41pet care industry. So this shortfall is more than just a numbers problem. It's a question of
00:48national readiness in terms of public health, food safety and animal welfare. So what will it take
00:54to train, retain and recognize the veterinary workforce who play such a critical role in
01:02our food and health systems? Joining me on the show to discuss this further is Professor Dr.
01:06Go Yong-Ming, who's Dean of UPM's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Go, thank you so much
01:14for being on the show with me today. From your academic standpoint, can you talk to me a little
01:21bit about how serious the current shortage of veterinarians are in Malaysia? Where are the
01:27pressure points that are being felt the most here? Maybe, thank you for addressing, I mean,
01:33giving the intro to the topic. I guess before we even arrive at the shortage, we need to know
01:38how do we get here in the first place? You were right in saying that there are about 2,500 practicing
01:45vets now. Actually, in actual fact, in terms of number registered numbers, we have about 3,877 as of
01:53March 2025. That is based on data from Malaysian Veterinary Council. And it wasn't an issue before
01:59because most of the vets are actually involved in various sector. Because I like to take this
02:07opportunity as well to maybe to correct some perception of what the public has about veterinarians.
02:13Because people tend to associate the face of veterinarians with a companion animal practice,
02:17namely dogs and cats, where else in actual reality, they are playing big roles in food security,
02:24producing food animals, and then ensuring safe food. In fact, the very first heart transplant
02:35was done in an animal model back in 1997 in UPM using our faculty. And of course, you don't attempt it in
02:41human beings first. So those are among the roles that the vets have played. And previously,
02:47it wasn't it wasn't very much a shortage because we are talking about vets that has been actively
02:54supporting the food industry. Based on the slides, based on the data that we have, the food animal
03:01industry in Malaysia is worth about 34 billion ringgits as of 2021. And then the companion animal itself,
03:08comprising of pet services and pet food is about 2.5 billion. So we're taking 34 billion versus 2.5 billion.
03:17So in terms of importance, I think the value can translate itself. It is right that the Department of Veterinary Services mentioned that there's actually a shortage because right now,
03:27we are actually at a critical point whereby those who entered service in the 1980s, 1990s are retiring in droves now.
03:36And the demographics seems to be pointing to more vets going into a small animal practice or companion animal
03:43practice rather than the ever critical food animal practice, which is important for food security. And that's
03:50why I think Department of Veterinary Services is actually revealing that shortages saying that we are
03:58actually in critical need of vets. Like what I mentioned just now, those are the areas that the vets can
04:04actually participate. But since all areas are not growing at the even pace, as a matter of fact, I can
04:12even quote that for every single food veterinarian that we have in the field, there are at least 7.5
04:19practicing small animal veterinarian. Whereas if you look at the value industry, 2.5 billion for animal
04:26industry versus food sector and food sector is the one that provides us with meat, milk and eggs. So I guess
04:35it's even more critical now. Dr. Goh, what's causing this imbalance? Why are more vets choosing to enter
04:44small animal practice or companion animal practice as opposed to food animal practice? I think the trend
04:50is actually not only happening here in Malaysia, it happens everywhere to the point that USDA, US Department
04:56of Agriculture even have to offer loan waivers to practicing veterinarians in the US to go into food
05:02animal. There are multiple factors. One of the factors will be, well, it's always more exciting
05:09to work in an urban setting whereby we have clinics where you can still keep your good balance of quality
05:18of life. That means you are still engaged with the community around you rather than staring at farm
05:22animals in some wilderness area. It's not something that is used to be, I mean, something that is
05:29acceptable to everybody. And second thing is that I think gender also played a big role.
05:36If you look at the statistics now, they are about 43% of males versus 57% of females in the vet industry.
05:44If you look at historical data, if you look at historical data, that is what we get. 43%
05:49male, 57% of females. But if you look at current trends, in terms of enrollment, women outnumbered men
05:57three to one. That means 75% females. Now, this represents some kind of challenges. We know that in
06:05order to be active in the food animal industry, you cannot farm in urban areas because there are land
06:11codes prohibiting setting up farms and all kinds of things. So as a result, most farms will be established in
06:17suburban areas or in fringe. And because of that as well, well, farms are meant by mostly guys in the
06:27guise of foreign workers and so on and so forth. So any other person who wants to go into those kind
06:32of facilities will have to be of the same sex. So there will be some kind of, not to say deterrent,
06:38discouragement for the ladies to go into food animals. And no doubt there are still people, there are still
06:44ladies who are actually in the food animal sector, but the number is not that many. In fact, at the
06:50universities, when we are actually sending out students to do practical training, yeah, by the way,
06:55our students typically need to complete anything between 24 to 32 weeks of practical training throughout
07:01the five years training. We also need to consider all these aspects because they will be, they will be
07:06housed in proximity within the same farm as those foreign workers who are typically male. So that is
07:13also something that deters a lot of veterinarians from going into food animal practice.
07:18Right. Just very quickly, can I look at Malaysia's veterinary education system? When we look at the
07:24system as a whole, do we have the capacity to meet both current and future demand? Do we have enough,
07:30are we producing enough veterinary graduates to begin with?
07:33Okay. There are two schools producing veterinarians in the country, one in UPM, one in UMK. Our combined
07:39capacity per annum is actually about 150 to 160. We are actually rapidly increasing that to maybe about,
07:47at most maybe about 200 a year. But we also have to consider that there are only about 110 veterinary
07:53academics in the country with PhDs. And again, the factor of age also comes in, factor of age,
08:01factor of retirement. To be very frank, my faculty, the current veterinary faculty now, we have about
08:0871 staffs and about one third of them will be retiring, including myself, in the next 10 years.
08:14So we can actually increase the class sizes, but we have to think about how to sustain those class sizes
08:21when we do not have enough academy. And by the way, we also follow the medical teaching staff to student
08:27ratio. We do not exceed, we limit the students at eight students per teaching staff. So because of all
08:35those factors, it really restricts the number of students that can train. Not to mention, the veterinary
08:41program is actually a very expensive program, much more expensive than all other programs. On average,
08:46it costs the government about 97,000 ringgit per student per year to train a student. Why? Because
08:53you need to build hospitals, you need to bring them to the farms and so on and so forth. So it's much,
08:59much more expensive as compared to other professions. So all those are factors that contribute to the
09:05limited capacity that we have. Dr. Goh, you're raising all these points that I think as a layperson and the
09:11public, I think may not have realized. Talk to me a little bit about how you see the path going forward.
09:19I mean, what kinds of policies or academic reforms would you recommend for us to be able to attract and
09:26train and retain a whole new generation of not just veterinarians, practicing veterinarians in maybe food
09:34animal practice but also veterinary academics who are qualified to bring up a new generation of this
09:42workforce? Dr. Yeah, I guess if you look at the materials that I mentioned just now, I've
09:46supplied to, I've presented earlier, we are experiencing an annual attrition of maybe about 5% in terms of the
09:55tertiary teachers, teachers in universities. So that is actually something that is of a concern to
10:02retain them because it pays the wages actually much more better outside. This is actually the same
10:08trend that we are seeing in medical sector as well. And secondly, our new graduates, well, maybe it's a
10:15good thing, good thing as well. Well, our graduates are typically, will have typically secured their jobs
10:22maybe two semesters, up to two semesters before they graduate. So attracting them back to the university
10:28will be a challenge. So I guess we need to have multiple strategies, a short-term plan, medium-term
10:34and long-term. Short-term, I guess, in order to boost the amount of personnel that we need
10:42to be running the food security, I mean the food, the farms and so on and so forth, we need to make use of
10:47the pool of veterinary paraprofessionals. Because since there are reluctance of certain members,
10:55certain of the veterinary community to be at the farms, we need to use these veterinary paraprofessionals
11:02comprising of nutritionists, comprising of animal breeders, animal scientists, animal paraprofessionals to be
11:09there to make up the numbers. Because after all, only things that involve practicing rights involving
11:16drugs requires vets. The second thing is that there should be maybe a review on how we actually deploy
11:23our vets. There should be some kind of incentives like what the US Department of Agriculture is doing,
11:28maybe waiver of student loans to facilitate more to get into food animal practice. And I think recently
11:36what the Sarawakian government is actually attempting to do by establishing a new vets school in UPM
11:43Campus Sarawak, which has just been proclaimed by our Tuanku Chancellor on the 1st of July is actually
11:50a move in the right direction. Because that is actually bringing vets closer to the areas where
11:56food is going to be produced. So I think all those are integrated strategies that we need to look at
12:01the uh in the long in the medium and in longer term. But we cannot we can never escape from the fact
12:08that we need to do continuous capacity building by training more academics. We are actually welcoming
12:13new vet schools either from the public sector or from the private sector. In fact, we really need um I
12:20mean private investments in order to grow the profession. I think for so long the vet profession has been
12:25under-invested because well number one thing is that not many people are aware what vets are actually
12:30doing. I guess the times to change is actually now. Dr. Goh, thank you so much for such an enlightening
12:38explanation. I hadn't realized some of the challenges that um veterinary um veterinarians face um veterinary
12:46academics as well and also the importance of it for our our public health and food systems. Thank you so much
12:51for your insights. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more on this topic. So stay
12:56tuned. We'll be right back.
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